6 Decades Of Tile Designs For UK Homes

2023 sees a milestone birthday for Topps Tiles, 60 years of bringing top quality tiles to UK homes. To celebrate, we thought it’d be fun to look back at the evolution of UK interiors over the last six decades with a mini retrospective. Could we adopt some of these styles into our modern homes?

Tiles as a covering have been used for centuries but they rose in popularity in the Victorian era, known for their durability and ease of maintenance, tiles were a great way to add style, colour and pattern anywhere in the home.

Post WWII, with the rise of an automated industry and more innovative machinery, tiles started to change. More variety was created for the homeowner, including printed designs, textured effects, colour shading and tile formats.

We look back at the UK’s most popular tiles and Dulux paint colours from each decade, from the 1960s to the 2010s.

The 60s were all about excitement; new technology, the space race and the rise of cheaper materials, like coloured plastic, all helped inform our interior choices. We were suddenly delved into mountains of choice and a means to express ourselves in our homes, whatever our budget.

Interior design palettes were made up of shades of yellows, burnt reds, browns and greens, a reflection of the passion and turbulence of the period. It also saw a resurgence in pattern from quirky geometrics to bold decorative florals contrasted against dark woods. The colour movement was firmly cemented with the introduction of the colour television in 1967.

The 70s were certainly an evolution of the 60s, still full of bold colour but it began to take a dizzyingly psychedelic turn. For the first time, bringing nature indoors became a focus for design, it was created using bold leafy wallpaper, natural materials and watercolour inspired prints of classic florals. However, it’s probably best remembered for the avocado bathtub. Coloured sanitaryware was everywhere and lasted long beyond 1979’s ‘winter of discontent’.

A reimagining of the 1980s always has a fun twist with bright pastels, pops of neon and a tropical theme but the everyday reality was various shades of beige and brown.

Magnolia on the walls highlighted brown crockery and coloured Pyrex glass in the kitchen where lacquer cabinets ruled, the shinier the better. Extensive draping meant fabrics were a key component to 80s style, whether it was a full-on curtain pelmet in the living room, a bed dust ruffle or a skirting on your side table.

The 90s were a strange mixture of the excessive 80s and soon to be pared back 00s. Minimalism was starting to occur but often created a strange mix of cultivated pieces, whether it be wicker chairs that looked like outdoor furniture in your dining room or capturing the essence of a French country kitchen using fake oak worktops.

Floral patterns juxtaposed with country plaids and stripes contrasted against soft tones of purple whilst furniture had a distinct Louis XIV vibe, whether it be traditional wood and fabric or transparent plastic. Let’s not reminisce about the sponge painting trend…

Popularised in the late 90s by TV shows like Changing Rooms, the accent or ‘feature wall’ curated the concept of zoning areas as we began to build open plan living spaces, bringing colour to an otherwise white scheme.

However, the more functional rooms in the home such as the bathroom and kitchen took the opposite turn by becoming darker with faux stone effects flooding every surface, otherwise known as Tuscan decor. As tiles became larger, seamless tiling was born. Accents of colour were brought in with faux flowers and coloured glass in shades of pink and aqua.

Exposed brick, steel beams, concrete floors and salvaged wood dominated interior spaces in the early 2010s as a reaction to the cold pared back interiors of the noughties. We also saw the rise of grey as the new neutral which slowly began to dominate after 2011’s hit fiction ‘50 Shades of Grey’. However, there was also another, slightly chicer, side of the decade which began with revitalising mid-century furniture and ended with blush pink as the new neutral.

Surface colour was also becoming more dominate in bathrooms and kitchens with the rise of coloured metals like copper and brass replacing the noughties strict chrome code. Tiles quickly followed suit, using more muted tones of teal and grey to highlight the metal fixtures.

Blending and layering styles from different eras helps to create a harmonious and timeless feeling space. You can take antique furniture and then add in contemporary touches of art or colour or you can contrast modern fittings and fixtures with a retro colour palette. We’ve created two looks, one kitchen and one bathroom, by blending each of the six eras together to work in today’s modern home.

Look One: Green Cabinet, 60’s Dining Table, Flute Terracotta, Dulux Buttermilk & Conker, Apuano, Plant pot, Eucalyptus

Shaker units, by its designer’s founding beliefs, is a timeless style of cabinetry for the kitchen, they provide a brilliant base to work from when blending different eras as their simplicity is the foundation. You can then start to add your layers, a darker beige on the walls, similar to Dulux’s 1970’s shade Buttermilk, provides the right amount of lightness and warmth to carry the rest of the scheme in contrast to a 2010 inspired dark green kitchen. A darker tone like Conker (from the 1980s) will then add depth when used as an accent colour.

Layering another warm terracotta tone, inspired by the 1990s, with added texture like the Flute Terracotta Decor lends a contemporary touch to the tiling. Popularised in the noughties, a stone effect floor adds movement and a little pattern to the scheme. You can then start to add in specific references to individual eras such as a vintage 60’s dining table in a varnished oak and rattan metal chairs, the rounded shapes subtly mirroring the fluted design of the wall tiles. Finally, touches of natural greenery will bring the space together, add accents of brighter colours like noughties aqua in plant pots or glassware.

Look Two: Blue WC, Dulux Satin Mink (archive colour), Elevo Natural Chevron, Matt Black Shower Head, Glass Jars, Grey Towels, Potted Succulent

The bathroom is the ideal opportunity to tap into the 1970s trend for coloured sanitary ware. You can find some amazing vintage pieces if you look in good reclamation yards, however if you’d prefer a newer design then do some internet research as brands are starting to bring coloured options back. We love this 90s baby blue tone for the toilet!

We’d advise avoiding matching all your sanitary ware together as that can look a little too retro, instead, opt for one piece you really like and then build a scheme around it. Here we’ve created a foundation using a deep taupe-beige from the 1980s and a light toned wood effect tile and then grounded it with the use of matt black metal. Throughout the 60s-00s you can see that shades of brown were used to ground the palettes; it wasn’t until the 2010s that black become more popular.

For a feminine touch that contrasts to the blue and black, opt for a berry shade of pink courtesy of the noughties. It’s warm enough to bring the cool tones of the rest of the scheme together. To break up the pink opt for a tile that has some form of pattern, we like Atro’s terrazzo effect as it still feels modern but if you want a retro vibe then go for a classic Minton Hollins floral design. For final styling, add some light grey fluffy towels and wide glass jars with lids for a 1960s flair.

Over the last two decades we have seen the manufacturing technology in tiles move leaps and bounds ahead. Super relief technology now expertly syncs texture with print to create the ultimate wood and stone effects on durable porcelain tiles. Tiles themselves have grown from a small format Metro (10x20cms) to XXL slabs ranging up to 120cm in size (and growing!) And of course, tile formats, decorative mosaics are on a downward turn and larger tiles are now available in hexagons, tear drops, crosses and letters to name but a few!

Sustainability is also playing a huge role in the future of tiles, recycled content will become more mainstream as we strive to protect natural resources. Our Principle range comprises of a massive 91.3% of recycled content along with an altered manufacturing process to lower energy consumption, including 23% less gas.

Our interiors now better reflect who we are as people as we learn to decorate our homes for ourselves, rather than the next buyer, but they still need some work on how they make us feel. Open plan living is reverting to multi-functional spaces so we can create a hybrid of work and home life. And our gardens are getting more attention than ever before, being seen as an additional living space to our interiors. The rest of the decade will be heavily influenced by two key themes, wellbeing and sustainability.

The connection to nature is what helps drive this force of positive wellbeing, we have seen this slowly evolve over the start of the decade, from the humble house plant to key colour combinations, specific artificial lighting, scent profiles and surface textures. Helping us better mimic the natural world in our homes increases our wellbeing, taking us momentarily away from our hectic technology driven lives when we don’t have the time to step into real nature.

The use of more sustainable materials and the reduction in plastic also connects us to more natural looking interiors, emphasised by the rise in earthy colours like sage greens, sky blues and warm toned neutrals. Trending interiors will slowly ebb away as we continue to evolve these key themes, focusing on the longevity of a space by blurring different eras and concepts harmoniously together. Two key concepts will phase our interiors from winter to summer and be split by people’s colour preferences, calming neutrals or bright colours.

L-R Dulux paint colours: Decadent Damson, Cookie Dough, Egyptian Cotton, Wild Wonder, Golden Sands, Indigo Shade. Styling Imagery L-R: Soho Home, Torrano Gold, Curved Mirror, Zyla Armchair

A cosy home taps into soft, warming neutrals that are dressed in sumptuous velvets and boucle in the winter and then lightened with crisp cotton, relaxed linens and clear-cut glass in the summery months of the year.

L-R Dulux paint colours: Prom Queen, Satsuma Spice, Berry Smoothie, Sweet Citrus, Everglade Forest, Sapphire Salute. Styling Imagery L-R: Flute Bright Skies, Colour Blocking, Drawer Chest, Wishbone Chair

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Bright Wonder is amplified by a bold but sophisticated use of colour. The hits of sugary lilac, spicy orange and forest green work with lighter woods for a Scandi feel or darker teaks for a retro vibe.

Share your memories and retro interior photos with us over on Instagram @toppstiles, we’d love to see some classic old school Topps tiles!