20 Terrible Y2K Design Trends Best Left in the 2000s

Do you ever wish it was the late 90s or early 2000s again? These bad design trends will remind you that we’re truly living in the golden age of interior design. Check out these terrible Y2K design trends and say “good riddance” with us.

Tuscan-Inspired Kitchens

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when we say “Y2K interior design”? For us, it’s this disaster of a design decision that was all the rage.

Stepping into a freshly renovated Y2K kitchen would make anyone want to eat grapes off the vine and sip a glass of grocery store vino.

If your kitchen didn’t look like something straight out of Tuscany in the 2000s, you just weren’t up with design trends. And honestly, that was probably for the best.

Beaded Curtains

OK, this Y2K trend might be slightly more controversial than Tuscan kitchens. Some people are die-hard beaded curtain fans (including some of us here at Blossom)!

But for others among us, the sound of those plastic beads clanking together as you pass from one room to the next is the stuff of nightmares.

Maybe it’s because we Millennials have traumatic memories of the beaded strings getting irreversible tangled up, while Gen-Z still has to learn that lesson the hard way.

Textured Walls

You can’t have a Tuscan kitchen without at least one textured wall in the home. The two go hand-in-hand as the perfect storm of Y2K interior design BFFs.

Did you ever have the unique pleasure of taking a sponge or balled-up newspapers to your walls? While it was fun to do, it wasn’t fun to look at.

What’s worse is that textured walls always seemed to come in unsightly colors like mustard yellow. deep blood-red, or slime green. And good luck getting rid of it!

Vertical Blinds

We’re reaching for our inhalers just looking at these vertical blinds. Every single one of them got impossibly dusty, no matter how hard you tried to combat it.

But these curtains were all the rage in the late 1990s and early 2000s, so you had to deal with the dust as best you could.

We will say, though: there was something oddly satisfying about running your hand down the row of vertical slats like some kind of giant Xylaphone.

Granite Overload

We get it: you like granite. Granite countertops are great, but there is a point of diminishing returns. When the granite starts creeping up the wall, you’re there.

Something about the 90s and 2000s made people really want to show off how much granite they could get their hands on, and unfortunately, it’s stuck around.

Another trend was dark gray or brown granite countertops, which tends to make the whole room look a bit dungeon-esque. We’re glad to move on from that.

Boxy Entertainment Centers

Speaking of dust, these things were absolute magnets for it. And as a kid around Y2K, it was always your job to dust and polish it.

There was something odd about a boxy TV just sitting out on its own, so we get the reasoning. Plus, you needed that storage for VHS tapes.

Still, we’re glad these goliath pieces of furniture have seen their heyday come and go, if only for the sake of our backs when moving furniture around.

Matching Furniture Sets

Having a matching bedroom furniture set at the turn of the century was the best way to let family and friends know you’ve finally made it.

Rather than piecing together furniture that complemented itself or consulting a designer, you would just walk into your local furniture store and buy it all at once.

It’s sad to think about all of the matching bedroom furniture sets that have been broken up and given away or sold piecemeal over the decades since then.

Carpeted Bathrooms

The rest of the house was always carpeted in the 90s and 2000s, so why not the bathroom? Because it’s a bathroom. That’s why.

No one wants to sink their toes into soft carpeting while going about their business. Even back when it was considered acceptable, no one liked it.

If you look closely at this image, you can see that the toilet seat is also cushioned. It’s still better than the carpeted toilet lids that also existed.

Fruit and Vegetable Decor

In the 90s and early 2000s, you had to question everything. Especially when it came to fresh fruit—because it might be made of wax.

You didn’t want to make the mistake of grabbing an apple off of Grandma’s kitchen counter and sinking your teeth into that waxy, plasticky texture.

Add to that the fact that home often had fruit-themed wallpaper or tablecloths to go along with it, and it was all just a little bit too much.