Mid-century homes always aspired to be on the cutting edge of innovation. Ads of that era advertised the “home of the future” and “the kitchen of tomorrow”, but today all of that future tech is … out of date. Today’s smart home technology offers exciting ways to modernize. But not every gadget is a good fit for your home—or your lifestyle. So, how do you decide which updates are worth the investment and which might age out faster than avocado green appliances?
Your mileage may vary: Are you a restored Hi-Fi and record cabinet person or do you yearn for an ever more interconnected smart sound system. One way or another, use these tips to make the right choices for your home and yourself:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Plan for Flexibility, Not Permanence
Technology evolves quickly, and what’s cutting-edge today might feel clunky tomorrow. Avoid embedding tech into your home’s structure. Instead, design for adaptability:
- Install Wiring Chases: Create hidden channels in your walls to make future upgrades a breeze. These can connect the basement, attic, or other spaces without tearing up walls later.
- Maximize Outlets: Add plenty of accessible, grounded outlets in high-use areas like kitchens and built-ins. Plan for flexibility in case your tech needs change. At the very least you’ll want to meet modern code. But go beyond that where every possible.
You can also be clever by setting outlets into built in storage spaces (wall shelving, kitchen cabinets and more) so that your upgradable appliances don’t need dangling extension cords to charge up!
Be Selective with Smart Devices
Not every “smart” product is worth the investment. Consider the following:
- Smart Security: Video doorbells and keypad locks offer convenience but compromise privacy. Choose devices that balance ease of use with your comfort level regarding data collection.
- Smart Lighting: Dimmable LED lights, particularly those that mimic the warm glow of incandescents, can modernize your home while enhancing its ambiance.
- Smart Speakers: If you love music throughout your home, flexible smart speaker systems can provide incredible sound. Opt for models that don’t listen back unless you’re comfortable with voice activation.
Avoid Tech That’s a Trend Trap
Some smart appliances, like connected refrigerators and dishwashers, are more gimmick than game-changer. They can be prone to planned obsolescence and even security vulnerabilities. Instead, stick to timeless, high-quality appliances that deliver reliability and style without the extra bells and whistles.
Use Plug-and-Play Solutions
Many modern technologies, like smart plugs and modular systems, don’t require major renovations. These gadgets allow you to control multiple devices (like lamps or fans) with your phone or a central hub—offering convenience without permanence.
The key to integrating smart technology? Focus on what enhances your life while maintaining the flexibility to update as trends shift and needs evolve.
Quick Design tip for your…resource library
A well-stocked library of mid-century resources is a must for any enthusiast. Books like Sarah Archer’s The Mid-Century Kitchen or curated lists of tile suppliers and design blogs can be your go-to tools for inspiration and practical guidance.
Not sure where to start? Check out my free Mid-Century Ranch Resources List. It’s packed with everything from iconic books to Instagram accounts you want to follow.
Get all my favorite Mid-Century Resources here:
Mid Mod House Feature of the Week
Color-Matched Appliances
Oh, the cheerful charm of a pink fridge or avocado green stove! These colorful appliances weren’t just about making kitchens adorable. The were a marketing tool!
Actually the (rapidly changing) fashions in kitchen appliance colors were part of the mid-century sales strategy of planned obsolescence. By tying appliances to trends, manufacturers ensured kitchens would look outdated fast, nudging homeowners to upgrade.
While today’s appliances lean toward neutral tones like white or stainless steel, there’s still room to play. Love the retro look? Go bold with a colorful appliance! Prefer longevity? Stick to classic finishes that age gracefully. Either way, your choice should bring you joy and fit your style.
Listen Now On
Resources
- Check out a true mid mod “House of the Future”… from Monsanto.
- And the Kitchen of Tomorrow!
- Missed the live Masterclass last month? Catch “How to Plan an MCM Remodel to Fit Your Life(…and Budget)” in replay!
- Get the essential elements of my master plan process in my new mini-course, Master Plan in a Month.
- Want us to master plan for you? Find out all the details with my mini-class, Three Secrets of a Regret-Proof Mid Mod Remodel.
And you can always…
- Join us in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
- Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
- Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Della Hansmann
Homes and products of the mid-century era were often advertised as of the future. Homebuyers were offered the Frigidaire kitchen of tomorrow, the Whirlpool miracle kitchen and the Monsanto house of the future. The ads look so space age even today, but their technology is pretty dated.
Della Hansmann
So if you’re a mid-century homeowner, what can you do right now to future proof your home during a renovation, or even any day of the week with purchases that capture as many modern conveniences as we can without painting ourselves into a corner with the ever changing technology that just goes out of date. I’ll give you a rundown on currently available technology that seems worthwhile and a philosophy for making choices for tech in your update of a mid-century home.
Della Hansmann
Also today on the podcast, we’ll talk about those great color matched kitchen appliances of the mid-century era and how the concept of plans obsolescence snuck in right along with them. Hey there. Welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host, Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast.
Della Hansmann
You’re listening to Episode 1909 and here we are in December. You may be barreling headfirst into your holiday To Do List of Mandatory Fun, panicking about how to meet your working year, end of year deliverables, or just feeling like the days are too short to add in a single extra thought.
Della Hansmann
But I want to encourage you to do your future self a little favor. If you are one of the listeners who has 2025 remodeling plans, hopes, dreams, dancing around in the back of your head, now is the right time to start your ball rolling.
Della Hansmann
And the great news is that beginning that process couldn’t be easier. I’m not going to promise you that taking on a remodel is easy by any stretch of the imagination, but starting the planning process is easy and fun. It’s not something you need to put off.
Della Hansmann
So I want you to reach out and set up a time to chat with me about your master plan possibilities. The introductory calls that I always start a master plan with are pleasant and low stakes. I am not in the business of selling people on things they don’t need. Oh, I guess that’s a bit of a spoiler for how I’m going to talk to you about technology in this episode as well.
Della Hansmann
But right now, but right now, I just want to know a little more about you and your home so that I can determine if your needs are a good fit for our master plan service, and you can ask me all your questions and decide if mid mod Midwest is a good fit for you.
Della Hansmann
You don’t have to have everything about your remodel figured out. Or to have done all your research on available technology. You don’t even have to have saved up your remodeling budget. You just have to know that your home needs some changing, and you want to plan soon to make some of those changes happen next year. Here’s why I’m encouraging you to reach out now.
Della Hansmann
There are two more weeks left in December before I will be closing down our office for our annual end of year shutdown. So if you want to jump to the head of the head of the line for next year’s project. You want to get our chat onto our calendar ASAP. If you’ve been putting this off for a while, make it happen now.
Della Hansmann
Here’s what you do. Head over to our website and check out the page called work with us. It’s in the top level menu. You can read all about how a master plan works or watch the helpful motivational explainer video I made for you about the process, and then click on the orange button that says, Apply to work with us. There’s a simple form that asks you some easy questions about you, your house and what you want to adjust about it.
Della Hansmann
Hit Send. We’ll get right back to you with a scheduler to set up a zoom call so that you and I can chat about the project and make sure that everyone involved is a good fit. If all goes well, we’ll slot you into our design calendar for early 2025 okay, I’m gonna move right on to our resource snippet. The design tip this week is to build out your library of mid-century resources.
Della Hansmann
By the way, this might be an excellent opportunity to gift something to a mid-century loving friend or household member, to add something to your own holiday wish list, or to give your house a holiday gift of its own. This is top of mind for me right now, because to prepare this episode, one of the first things I did was to reach for Sarah Archer’s wonderful book the mid-century kitchen.
Della Hansmann
This book is on the list of resources I’ve pulled together. And the mid-century ranch resources list is something that when I started out, I think I had 56 articles, books, magazines, product suppliers that I had gathered, and over the last several years I have added to it. I think it now weighs in at well over 100 honestly, I haven’t counted recently, but this isn’t heavy homework.
Della Hansmann
This is a searchable list broken down into my favorite books on history, books on design, books on architects, books on movements, also a TV and movie list of mid-century designed and collected things to check out visually my favorite magazines, blogs, Instagram accounts to follow, a starter guide for furniture suppliers, a tile source guide, and even a list of common mid-century household hazards to watch out for.
Della Hansmann
So you can grab that whole checklist at mid mash, midwest.com/resources or you can find it in the show notes page, if you just check out the entire list of resources for this particular episode, plus a transcript of the conversation at mid mod midwest.com/ 1909, all right, let’s get into technology, the future, the past and obsolescence in mid-century homes today.
Della Hansmann
So the idea of a futuristic dream home has long been an obsession of the mid-century. After all those atomic age, dreamers were imagining flying cars and jet packs and robot maids were just around the corner. They built out their houses with connected sound systems, intercoms, dimmer controlled lighting, vacuum systems for the whole house. But the thing about all of that latest and greatest technology built into a house is there’s always going to be something new.
Della Hansmann
And when we talk about the most future inflected mid-century houses, we’re often talking about the ones we see on TV, the ones we see in advertising. The builder basic house of the mid-century was, was pretty basic. It did not have a whole house vacuum system. It might not have had such a thing as a dimmer switch.
Della Hansmann
These are the kind of features that people will point out to you as original through mid-century home. If they’re lucky enough to have a house that was a little bit more of a show home, or designed by an architect, or a higher grade or maybe built in the 60s rather than 50s.
Della Hansmann
The leveling up process of technology feels pretty inevitable. Throughout our lifetimes, we’ve seen us transfer from Wall phones to car phones to flip phones to smartphones, and in our visual technology went from just what was on the television to video to set tapes to DVDs to blu ray to streaming. And now things aren’t always on streaming, and people are wondering if they should hang on to their DVD and blu ray collections, these sort of bouncing back and forth of technologies.
Della Hansmann
Things are always happening, and certainly they were happening in the mid-century era. So this is actually an interesting way to dive in, to think about how the technology that might be built into your mid-century house has shifted. The builder basic home of the mid-century era has a lot of technology from its era.
Della Hansmann
Let’s pick on lighting for an example, light bulbs, specifically in a build or basic mid-century home, typically, you would have just one ceiling light per room in the main in the bedrooms, maybe not even a ceiling light in the living room. Might have been meant for task lighting and maybe one ceiling light in the dining room, these would each have two to four incandescent bulbs hidden inside some sort of a glass fixture.
Della Hansmann
There would be the odd can light, perhaps, but only as a wall washing art feature, not actually as general room lighting. And then in work areas like kitchens, sometimes bathrooms, certainly in a workshop, you would have a fluorescent tube light hidden behind a wooden valence that if you leaned in, you’d get a blinding view of fluorescent light. This was honestly, it was the best they could do.
Della Hansmann
Concept, good execution, kind of terrible. But since then, we’ve had an almost constant evolution, even in light bulbs. In my own lifetime, we went through a craze for ultra bright, efficient halogen lights that were great for super bright task lighting but would get overheated to the point of being quite dangerous. They were also very unpleasant if you happen to glance directly into a halogen bulb. Good luck to you seeing anything for the next half an hour.
Della Hansmann
Then we took a big step forward in terms of replacing our incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents. These were a big jump forward in inefficiency, using significantly less power and generating less heat than standard incandescents. People who cared about the environment went around their houses like crazy replacing older bulbs with CFL, but they had a downside too.
Della Hansmann
Each CFL bulb contains a small amount of mercury, and the bulbs themselves were ugly, those odd tubes that didn’t fit into every standard incandescent light fixture housing. Plus they aren’t as efficient as the newer LED technology, which was chasing them to consumer market led, which stands for light emitting diode. These lights have actually been around since the 1960s originally, they produced only a red light, so they were used for tiny indicators and not much else.
Della Hansmann
But I remember being in my freshman chemistry lecture as my animated instructor paced around to the front of the hall, borderline ranting about how LEDs were going to change everything now that they could produce multiple colors. They were poised to revolutionize traffic lights, streetlights, car lights and more. He actually wasn’t wrong. The progression on LEDs has been slow to catch up within the limits of dimmability. And LEDs used to have an irritating flicker at low light power, but now today, they’re working pretty well. Now this is again, like you, you just can’t predict when is the right moment to hop into a technology.
Della Hansmann
When I moved into my house eight, eight years ago, I put shallow disc surface LED lights into two of my three bedrooms, replacing the original glass shielded light fixtures that had come on in the house. I thought they would look sleek, minimalist, classy, and they do, when they’re off, but because they are an earlier grade of LED technology, they do flicker slightly, and they give me a headache, and I hate them, so I only use them when I’m packing or cleaning late at night. The rest of the time they stay off, and I just use bedside lamps and task lighting in those bedrooms, or I go with them in daylight.
Della Hansmann
So this is a microcosm of what can happen with technology. Speaking of LEDs, I would say they have pretty fully arrived. Now. They no longer have that dead of winter blue, white color, and actually. I have a great find. Philips just made a product that specifically is meant to be dimmable, and when it dims, it goes to a warmer and warmer, a yellower or even a redder color as it is dimmed, which is wonderful. It sort of brings us back to that incandescent low light feeling we could get back in the day, but with an energy efficient option, and cooler.
Della Hansmann
So that’s wonderful, but I promised you a list of smart tech that you might or might not want to move forward with on your home today. Here is a semi complete list with my opinions on whether they are great to plan into your house or maybe not something you want. These days, there are so many smart home devices that you can set up and control pretty much anything, from your phone lighting, thermostats, door locks, security cameras, kitchen of flying pants, video doorbells and more. I am mid on most of these tools.
Della Hansmann
In some cases, the convenience factor is great, and it can be fun to know what temperature it is in your basement while you’re out of town or remotely let someone into your garage to visit or perform a surface when you’re not there for this kind of well, let’s start with Smart Security. Your mileage may vary. Personally, I think there can be kind of an unsettling level of scope creep. I’m not a fan of ringing doorbells as a general principle, because it seems to lead to a stalkerish level of eyes on your street.
Della Hansmann
But on the other hand, many people take comfort in the knowledge that there’s a record of packages being dropped off, neighbors knocking kids running past the house, the fact that your pet sitter did come and leave at the time that they told you that they would. So this is where you’re going to judge your own convenience, your level of comfort, against your feeling about the technology. It can be nice to know, and it can also be done without going quite as far as smart technology.
Della Hansmann
You might just choose to have a keypad lock on your door or garage, which could allow you to share the passcode with someone temporarily and then reset it when you no longer want to grant them access. That way, you don’t necessarily have to have a subscription service or a constant connection to your phone giving you notifications about the fact that your spouse is home from work, it is nice to think about having a way to unlock your house with a device.
Della Hansmann
It can seem more convenient in this generation than carrying a key around in a world where one thing we always have is our phones, if nothing else, but you’ll want to weigh for yourself, not just what is the latest cutting edge technology, but what feels pleasant and right to you. It might be that your house just needs a house key, and that’s good enough, or you might choose to put a keypad lock or a smart entry point just on one part of the house, so that you have a way for a house sitter, a friend or an emergency access point to get into the house without a key.
Della Hansmann
But in general, that’s not how you generally come and go. Again, as with everything I give in terms of design advice, this is going to come down to your personal preference, and I’m going to out myself as something of a Luddite on the very next topic, which is smart speakers. You may go ahead and take everything else I take in this episode with a grain of salt, because I’m going to tell you that I have a smart speaker system I use Sonos, just because I happen to have landed on it first that I can cast music to from my phone, and I love it.
Della Hansmann
I turn on sounds in various parts of the room at a time or all at once, for a surround sound experience that follows me where I want to go. But I intentionally opted for a speaker system that I have to operate from an app on my phone, not one that I can talk to, because I would like to listen to my speakers, and I do not want my speakers to listen to me. I feel like there’s enough of that going around. So this is where, if you value convenience over creep, you probably already own an Alexa, an Amazon Echo, an Apple Siri, one of these controlled devices and maybe systems, that does a lot of things in your house.
Della Hansmann
The downside of each of these different sort of product lines that I just name checked is that they’re pretty siloed. You’ll need to stick with an apple system, an Amazon system, a Google system for all of your smart tech, because they’re generally only semi compatible with each other if you’re already a die-hard from one of these systems that might seem like the cost of doing business. For example, all of my computer tech is Apple because it has been for the last 15 years, and I don’t want to change now.
Della Hansmann
You’ll want to make your own evaluation of what convenience versus creepiness versus how you feel comfortable with the various available technologies, particularly in terms of the kind of tech you talk to, the cost of an AI use on the environment, for example, and make some evaluations that way. But these are all options that exist, and certainly they can be very well integrated into your house if you want to go in that direction.
Della Hansmann
One thing I’m going to take a stand and certainly recommend against is smart appliances. This would be smart, refrigerator, smart, dishwasher, smart, I don’t even know why they’re coming up with these things. There’s two reasons for that. The first tip is that smart appliances have some very random, unapproved, unsupervised technology installed in them. We really don’t know who is able to listen in or certainly to use the data gathered for these devices for what purpose it’s not regulated, and just to elevate the creep factor per.
Della Hansmann
Consumer Report magazine, it’s absolutely possible for someone to hack your non secure software in, for example, a home washing machine, a smart washing machine that lets hackers then get access to your home Wi Fi network, and from there, branch out to other more important security devices. No, thank you.
Della Hansmann
Also, the software in that kind of modern smart device can be a limiting factor on its useful lifespan. Appliance companies have, in general, really rushed into the smart industry because they thought it was people wanted, but they don’t have the corporate infrastructure to run their tech end indefinitely. If they stop producing a product, they make no promise to keep supporting its software.
Della Hansmann
So you can actually have a refrigerator that is still capable of being a refrigerator. All of the mechanics still work, but it stops working properly or being controllable properly because its software has gone out of date and is not being updated anymore. So I just, I just recommend against any kind of smart kitchen technology. I
Della Hansmann
don’t think that it’s properly regulated. I don’t know that it’s going to have the staying power that we’re looking for. It feels like a gimmick to me. Of course, time will tell. One thing to note, though, is that most of the Smart Objects I’ve just mentioned, everything from home security to lighting to speakers, none of this is really something that needs to be built into your home.
Della Hansmann
Maybe it needs a little bit of light wiring, but all of it is pretty much an individual system or an object that you bring into your house, plug in and sit down on a surface or hang on the wall. Now I think that’s intentional. On the product developers’ part, a, they want to sell you the device this year and then upgrade you to a new one in another year or two. And B, they know they can’t promise that any of this technology will last. They’re not recommending that you attach it to your home structure in a permanent way.
Della Hansmann
One through line in technology is that it will always change. There are no universal standards, and even the most default elements, like electrical outlets, have shifted since the mid-century. Era in those early 1950s 1960s years, most home outlets were two prong, ungrounded, and that’s one of the first thing that most homeowners change if they pick up a time capsule house, you’ll need to rewire at least a few outlets to be able to plug in a computer, a refrigerator, a major modern appliance that requires grounding and people can also you can get a converter that just sort of plugs into two outlets and then makes three outlets.
Della Hansmann
That is not a grounded outlet. It is possible to retrofit the kind of outlet that runs to bx, that’s the metal housing cable manually. You can do it yourself with a little bit of research, but if you want to get into upgrading all of the outlets in your house for modern, grounded outlets. You may be getting into a major rewiring project.
Della Hansmann
And it’s also worth noting that even what you upgrade those outlets to changes over time I’ve had in my own lifetime of being a residential architect, we went through an era right after I got out of grad school where everyone was recommending that we put USB plugs in instead of regular plug outlet plugs or, in addition, sell a kind of an outlet box that had two spots to plug in, a plug appliance and also two spots for USB.
Della Hansmann
The USB was a universal standard for perhaps longer than a lot of things, but now we’ve moved on. We’ve got USB mini, USB C, and all of these different developing technologies just lead me to believe that you don’t necessarily want to go around wiring the newest technology into your house.
Della Hansmann
All of these features as they are introduced, is new tech rapidly become old tech, and then even more rapidly, obsolete, and certainly with a mid-century house, we’re playing catch up on technology as much as we are trying to look forward. Whenever you take on a remodel, you have the opportunity to upgrade things like wiring in any wall that you open up, perhaps to improve the electric panel.
Della Hansmann
If you are still operating on a house which has a fuse panel, you’re going to want to replace it with a breaker panel. You may need to update from 100 amp to 200 amp service. It may not be necessary to upgrade the entire house’s wiring. That good old BX cable, the kind that has two fabric wrapped wires running through a metal articulated channel, is sturdy and functional as long as it was properly installed and nothing bad is happening in intervening decades.
Della Hansmann
But if you do have a reason to take a room in your mid-century house down to its studs to be able to see inside the wall, it’s an excellent opportunity to upgrade the wiring, to add in as many grounded outlets as you can, to set up three way light switches with dimmers, and perhaps even to plan for additional switch options to be installed easily in the future.
Della Hansmann
From a future proofing perspective, it’s less important to anticipate exactly what technology will be in the future than it is to allow yourself a little leeway to make changes as the technology changes around us. So sit down with your electrician or your project manager if you’ve got a more full service general contractor and talk to. Them about logical places in the layout to add a chase where wiring can connect down into the basement for easy connection to other parts of the house, up into the attic.
Della Hansmann
Ditto, and ask them for their best current thinking on router placement and where you might need a booster to improve wireless signals to your house, where it’s useful to still run base connectable cables throughout the house. Now this is actually a place where we can take a lesson from the original mid-century designers, because they often set this up for plumbing.
Della Hansmann
They often set up necessary plumbing fixtures over an unfinished part of a basement where you could access the plumbing from below, or with a shower wall backing up against a closet in an adjacent bedroom, which had an inner lining of a removable panel, rather than finished plaster, being able to get near a finished public wall, like the part of your living room where you most likely mount a TV from the backside, from a less finished space, like a closet or a bedroom behind a wooden panel wall, makes future maintenance work a breeze.
Della Hansmann
The other thing to think about is, like I said earlier, a lot of the future technology. A lot of the Today, technology that we think of as so futuristic and cutting edge isn’t necessarily something that’s wired into the house. It’s not a whole house stereo system that needs to have hidden in the walls, wiring panels and built in speakers. Instead, it’s something that you want to set around.
Della Hansmann
Speakers, for example, have gotten much smaller, so they can be mounted on a high shelf or tucked into an existing built in system, or a new AV built in Bookshelf system, but they’re still probably going to need power. So this is an item that when you’re planning new built ins, particularly for bookshelf storage or any kind of changing up the space, you want to have as many accessible plugs as possible.
Della Hansmann
You want to have set up those plugs so that you can plug into within the chambers of a bookshelf, rather than having to drape wires over the front or drill holes through a system after the fact, there’s another really great upside, bright side to that kind of plug and play future technology, again, rather than having to build a whole house vacuum system like A mid-century house might have had, if it was really reaching for the future, you could think about putting in a whole house vacuum system during a remodel.
Della Hansmann
By the way, they’re actually really fun. You just plug the hose in in each room, and it goes into a whole house collection point somewhere. However, you can also get a wand based modern vacuum that doesn’t need a hose at all. So, but I digress. The thing I was going to say is there’s also the aspect of smart plugs. Now, these are a little object you plug into, the plug the outlet on the wall, and then you plug your device into them, and they allow you to control that object from your phone or a central distribution system.
Della Hansmann
This might be useful for putting things on dimmers. And it’s also possible to turn on or off multiple light fixtures at a time. This is a great way to update vintage electronics. Personally, I love the process of going around my house at night turning off a series of the small dim lamps that I use in the evening to feel soothing.
Della Hansmann
So as I go around, I’m putting the house to bed by turning off the light by the sofa, the light that’s on low in the kitchen, the light that sits next to the TV and doesn’t shade it out too much. I put the house to bed. Put Roxy to bed, then I put myself to bed. I like the ritual of it, but you could just as easily gang together a series of relatively inexpensive smart plugs for all the table and plug in pendant and floor lamps in your house and then bring them to a night mode, a bright day mode, or off.
Della Hansmann
It’s even possible to connect them all to a wall switch so you can walk into the house and welcome yourself home by flipping on all of those little separate lights at once. I do want to give you a permission structure for building new current technology into your house if you want to wire your house in through the walls with a cutting edge high end speaker system, knock yourself out, you’ll be just as delighted by it as the original mid-century homeowner was with their hard wired box speakers and built in record player.
Della Hansmann
And if the Times change, you can cut a few holes in the wall, make changes yourself and then re patch them with relatively little harm. But if your preferences lend themselves not to setting up constant new systems that you need to undo, I would worry more about blending in artfully concealed plugs into counters and shelving units so that you can set up and replace appropriate devices that match our current technological moment.
Della Hansmann
So to summarize, the most useful plan for setting your house up for future technology is to plan for flexibility, build in some chases that would be open channels that run down the wall where you can easily fish a wire down to the basement or up to the attic or a second floor to make changes over time, and while you’re at it, make detailed notes for yourself in the future, or for any future homeowner about where those chases are so that they can be usefully used take a few photos of the walls before they’re closed up.
Della Hansmann
But generally, just think about how you can set yourself help now with a house that has as many modern conveniences as you would like, but also has the ability for you to remove and replace those as they inevitably go in and out of style. So. I’m going to roll us right into our mid-century house feature of the week.
Della Hansmann
Now I chose color matched kitchen appliances for last year’s mid mod madness matchup, but I’m actually going to come right back to the beginning of the episode and talk about Sarah Archer’s wonderful book, the mid-century kitchen, because she talks about the thinking behind the marketing of these colored appliances. And it wasn’t just to make kitchens cuter, it was to put them in style. And as I’ve said so many times over the years, creating this podcast, anything that is trendy that you choose for your house will eventually inevitably become out of date and then need to be replaced with the latest current trend.
Della Hansmann
So if all refrigerators and all stoves and all dishwashers were always white, they might have subtle differences of shaping and style. Certainly, a 1940s refrigerator in any color looks different from one from the 60s looks different from one from today, but it would be much harder to know what was the sort of current moment and exactly when that had been picked, whereas once they started to get into these ideas of color ways, you could have the sort of easy to identify moment of the house by the colors that were chosen for it.
Della Hansmann
There were advertising colors for specific years that shifted in of style, and then went out of style. And it was absolutely a creepy plan on the part of marketers to make us have to replace these appliances again and again. It does not actually mean that our frugal grandparents of the mid-century era actually did that, and they hadn’t quite gotten around to the idea of building that kind of appliance to self-destruct, to basically have some collection of parts that would wear out on it in five or 10 years, which is why you can still find Facebook marketplace ads for 1940s era refrigerators that still run and people generally just keep in their garage to keep beer in them.
Della Hansmann
But this idea of colorways was the opening shot in the war against consumers to make products absolutely obsolete on purpose, that concept of planned obsolescence would force people to buy a product that could otherwise have lasted for many decades again because it wore out or in the first place because it went out of style.
Della Hansmann
Now that said there’s still so much to love about a color matched set of kitchen appliances, and my philosophy of color applies to these completely, which is, if you don’t care if you think a white refrigerator is perfectly neutral, or these days, it’s probably going to be stainless. If stainless doesn’t bother you, go ahead and go with stainless. It’s probably going to stay in style longer, although now we have all these ridiculous if you’re buying a refrigerator today, you’re going to be hit with black stainless and black glass and color panels and replaceable pieces, and this all makes you feel like you can change with the times when you need to. But again, how long are those products going to be supported?
Della Hansmann
What I’m trying to say, though, is, if you have a love for a particular color, for a particular style. Go ahead do it. Same for tile and a bathroom if you want to, go ahead and put back mid-century, baby pink or powder blue, tiled bathroom with matching appliances, matching fixtures, knock yourself out. You should have joy in your house, and color is one of the best ways to get joy. But if you don’t care, if it doesn’t feel like the thing that sparks joy in you, then I would recommend that you go relatively neutral, because the least trendy solution is going to be the one with the best staying power.
Della Hansmann
I’ve just flipped open the mid-century kitchen book now, and I’m looking at some of the vintage ads she’s highlighting here. We’ve got this bold headline. Spring has a new color this year, avocado by General Electric. And then it’s funny, because there’s also an ad for an avocado color sink from the same era. It makes me feel like that scene in The Devil Wears Prada, where Meryl Streep explains the way that the blue sweater that Anne Hathaway is wearing was chosen so specifically for Paris Fashion Week. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, X number of years ago, and she knows it so exactly, I’d love to know what was going on in the minds of marketing advertisers from that era, how they hit on harvest gold.
Della Hansmann
Oh, here’s another harvest gold. KitchenAid, portable dishwasher. Portable dishwasher, by the way, if you’re not familiar, was the kind of dishwasher that you could roll out, plug into your sink, use it to wash all of the dishes, unplug it from your sink, which was its water source, and then roll it away. I don’t know where, into a pantry. Mid-century, houses didn’t have all that much space, but before there were built in dishwashers, there were roll away dishwashers, and my grandparents actually owned one.
Della Hansmann
All of this is to say I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the moments when they were choosing these colorways, and now we look back on them with such nostalgia and joy for how adorable those like pink matching teal, matching harvest gold and avocados. Imagining appliances all are, but there was a darker purpose. It was very much calculated to get us hooked on something that looked of today.
Della Hansmann
Spring has a new color this year, so that five years from now, everyone would know you did your kitchen five years ago and it’s a five year old kitchen. Well, shouldn’t you be thinking about redoing it again? This is where I think we have an advantage as lovers of mid-century style, even if we’re in the update category.
Della Hansmann
If you love a time capsule house, well, that’s not gonna go more out of date than it is. It is what it is. You lean into the moment that it’s from, you can make correct choices going back to that moment. Trends don’t matter to you. And even if you’re planning to update and upgrade your house a little bit if you’re pulling from the material palettes, from the sort of style language of that era, you’re again avoiding trends, and you’re avoiding the trendiness and then out of date-ness that comes hand in hand with that planned obsolescence of style.
Della Hansmann
So I’m going to throw some images of some great color matched kitchen appliance ads into the show notes episode for this page, and you can find so many more of them if you want to go digging on Pinterest, they really are joyful. You find your favorite color, and you just imagine, what if everything in your house was that color? For me, of course, it’s yellow, and I pretty regularly dream about setting myself up with a yellow refrigerator. I don’t think I would care if it ever went out of style. I don’t know that it is in style, so I’m probably safe there.
Della Hansmann
But on the other hand, the kind of boring, perfectly neutral, white refrigerator that the previous owner chose for my house is neutral and inoffensive and works just fine. So at the end of the day, we make a balance of the technology that we want that’s going to make us happy and ignoring the things that seem unimportant to us.
Della Hansmann
So while all of this was meant to give you kind of an overview of the things you might want to include in your house, I want to encourage you to avoid any kind of internet Google list of the 10 or the 25 or the 50 new technological things you must include in your renovation. Now you must not. You don’t have to put any new technology into your model if you don’t want to, other than, of course, what is required by code.
Della Hansmann
But you’ll never go wrong by updating the number of outlets in your kitchen to meet modern building code standards. It’s nice to have more grounded outlets in a kitchen than the mid-century house kitchen tends to come with, by the way, I’ve talked a little bit about lighting in this episode, but I have not covered all of the things that regularly come up when I talk about upgrading and updating mid-century lighting.
Della Hansmann
So if that is a topic that you’d like to hear more about, reach out to me on Instagram. Send me a message. I’m at mid mod Midwest on Instagram, and that’s the best way to get a hold of me personally and let me know that mid-century lighting is a topic that you’d like to know more about, and or if there’s another topic, you’d like us to dive deeply into on a podcast episode, I recently got a request for roofing and re-roofing materials and choices for mid-century homes.
Della Hansmann
So that is going to be an upcoming episode, probably in the new year. Meanwhile, I’m going to turn you back into your day with the reminder that if you’ve got plans for updating, upgrading, making changes to the layout of making changes to the surfaces of your mid-century home in the next year, I would love to talk to you about a master plan.
Della Hansmann
And you can always find me and reach out to talk about when is the right time, and how will we set up your mid-century master plan by heading over to mid mod midwest.com and clicking on Apply to work with us, you can find the show notes for this episode, those pictures of mid-century, color, black, kitchens and everything else I’ve talked about.
Della Hansmann
The transcript of this whole episode at mid mod midwest.com/ 1909 and then I’ll be back in your feed next week, sharing some examples of how to fit an excellent work from home space an office for your home, perhaps your only office into a mid-century house, even if you actually have two adults in the house that need a home office.
Della Hansmann
This is something we’re encountering more and more often in our master plans, so I’ll be talking about all the design considerations for planning to remodel a good home office space into your mid-century home next week, catch you then.