21 Pinterest Decor Trends You Should Avoid

Pinterest is a great place to look for some of the hottest new decor trends.  There you can find an endless number of ideas for every room in your home. With over 450 million global users, we are talking about a whole lot of minds coming together, but that doesn't mean that every idea coming from Pinterest is a great idea.

Like any trending topic on social media, Pinterest ideas quickly go out of fashion just as quickly as they started. Many unique trends that start have a very short life expectancy, and so you don't want to spend a ton of money trying to jump on all of them. From stair decals to fruit hammocks, some decor trends may be best to avoid.  And that's why we've compiled a list of some of the most popular but ultimately terrible ideas that came from Pinterest.

Pinterest can be a great resource for those of us who want to decorate our homes on a budget, but there are some trends that are just a waste of money. Here are some Pinterest home decor fads that are well past the peak of their popularity or are otherwise doomed to fail. Let's take a look!

Chevron is so 2013, but for some reason, people are still using it on throw pillows, accent walls, and a multitude of other home decor pieces. There are so many other beautiful patterns that you should check out instead, such as floral, plaid, herringbone, houndstooth, animal, and geometric. These won’t go out of style nearly as quickly.

The chevron pattern is just about the epitome of tacky patterns.  It doesn't look good in any home, no matter how modern or quirky you are. If it ever looked good, and it didn't, believe us, it lived an exceedingly short life. 

We don't understand how this trend is still going on into the new decade. It's one of the UK's most famous catchphrases but in the United States its more of a meme than anything, and now it's a meme that's plastered on just about everything and its a horrible time to be alive.

You can finish this phrase with anything from, “Dance in the Rain” to “Eat a Donut,” but none of these sayings should find their way into your home. A better idea is to simply create a painting that has the words “Dance in the Rain” or “Eat a Donut” on it, and forget about the first part altogether because it has become a terrible cliche. Keep Calm and Forget This Trend Ever Existed.

You can make all kinds of furniture from free, old wooden palettes, including bookshelves, headboards, and coffee tables.  Unfortunately, these pallets can contain E. Coli and other bacteria, which makes this Pinterest fad not worth it. You can buy new pallets if you want, but that kind of defeats the purpose of making something with free, decent-quality wood. 

What should you instead then, you ask? Buy old, high-quality furniture from yard sales or thrift shops and refinish it. You’ll save a bundle (and your health)! Makeshift furniture is not really the way to go if you want an antique or rustic look.

Don’t get us wrong, we love the idea of color dipping. But not color-dipping furniture. Remember that this is still a trend, and trends nearly always go out of style within a few years. You want your furniture to remain relevant and classic for many years to come.

So, if you have the urge to color dip, stick with bowls, vases, and mirrors instead of your pricey dressers and dining room tables.  Colors like patterns and even some fabrics have their time and place, so they are prone to becoming outdated—at least plan for something to last you a decade or so.

People paint their walls, fridges and other items with chalkboard paint. While it’s a good idea in theory, once people actually start drawing or writing on these surfaces, it looks rather messy and smudged (nothing like the photos on Pinterest).  Gte a larger chalkboard if you must, but don't paint your whole wall like one.

A chic alternative is to paint your wall or fridge a pattern, such as wide, bold black-and-gold stripes that will stay in a pristine condition much longer than chalkboard paint. If you must do something out of the ordinary, there are more effective ways of doing that than transforming your home into a grade school.

Everyone loves a good mason jar craft, but it’s easy to overdo it and use mason jars for literally everything. They’re fine for a few crafts, but they can become boring if you don’t use any other kind of vessel for your decor. Variety is the spice of life, so try to mix it up in your household by using tin cans and wine bottles for vases, makeup brush holders, and candle holders. 

Mason jars certainly have many applications but stick to just one. You couldn't be using mason jars for drinking margaritas and then also using them to dispense soap. Farmhouse decor can be cute, but not when it dominates your very way of life. 

We get it. Paint chips are free at just about every hardware store, but that's no excuse to hop on this bandwagon. When this trend first started out, the calendars were kind of cute, but now it’s gotten out of hand, and we have all kinds of paint chip art that looks cheap and tacky. 

If you like the idea of decorating with ready-made bits of color, find gold or silver poster board, cut out some circles, and use those instead. They’re more subtle and classy. Getting greedy with the paint samples is not the way to decorate your home.  Abuse of power is how we lose nice things.

Limewashed walls are gaining some traction on Pinterest when it comes to home décor ideas and we can’t really figure out why. The look doesn’t go with most modern home décor unless everything in your home, including the outside looks somewhat antiquated. But that’s not true for most people using limewashed paint.

Limewashed walls add a rustic look to your home that can look nice but it really limits you on the type of décor that you can have in your room. So, unless you are truly dedicated to the rustic look, you should probably avoid having walls in your home that shout that style out loud.

The Bohemian chic look is really a mockery of the hippie look. It’s ironic in that if you aren’t a hippie and are deliberately going for a hippie look, you are going for a specific type of style that conforms to a predetermined set of ideas, which makes you decidedly un-hippie like, because you aren’t really exercising your “free spirit.”

In most homes, the boho chic look is a bit extra, particularly when its just a theme for one room. You should especially avoid mass-produced stuff that is labeled as bohemian, because then you are really getting hit in the face with that irony. Typically, you want your bohemian pieces to be handmade, so if you insist, try somewhere like Etsy.

Sure, plants are nice and its okay to have a few natural accents in your home, but don’t overdo it in your home to the point where your house looks like a greenhouse, or you are playing a game of Jumanji. There is such thing as too many plants and that looks something like this.

An accent Ficus tree in the living room or maybe a rubber plant isn’t a terrible thing, but you don’t need a plant for every wall. You especially want to avoid vines in your home, as that will for sure make your home look like a jungle, which isn’t quite a cozy “home” feeling. Go camping if you want to see plants and trees!

Settle down with the throw blankets. Pinterest trends are showing us throw blankets galore and we have to say: we are not fans. Like throw pillows, too many throw blankets are just plain unsightly. There’s nothing functional about having too many, and it makes the room look messy.

If you want it to look like you have dozens of people crashing at your house for the night, by all means, have as many throw blankets as you like. But when it comes to throw blankets in terms of style, we think less is more. A throw blanket should be merely an accent, it shouldn’t dominate your home décor.

This is one of the strangest new kitchen trends we don’t quite get. This one involves you putting holes into your cabinets to hang a hammock from the bottom that holds your fruit. It’s intended as a space saver, but it looks tacky if you ask us.

Plus, it’s not really saving you space on your counter, because it hangs low enough that you can’t really put anything under it, and you probably won’t be chopping under it either. That being said, just stick to a fruit bowl like everyone else. A fruit bowl looks nicer on your counter and you can find one that suits your kitchen perfectly.

These are just a horrible accident waiting to happen. Even if you are the most careful person, we all fumble occasionally. Maybe it’s dark, and you’re drunk, it doesn’t matter because falling on a cactus will make you second-guess your decision regardless of the circumstances.

Even if you are the biggest cactus aficionado, you have to admit that the cactus isn’t exactly the comfiest of plants out there. No one likes getting pricked by a cactus so it’s not going to draw anyone into your space. If your goal is to scare people away, then sure, go with the cactus as a houseplant.

Bathroom area rugs are about as bad as having full-on carpeting in your bathroom. Unless it’s a small bathroom rug next to your sink, you aren’t likely to be washing that rug too often, which means it's just collecting germs, mold, and all sorts of nasty business that will accumulate over time.

You don’t need to fill up empty space on your bathroom floor with a rug. It’s not a living area, you aren’t going to live in your bathroom or spend a lot of time in there, so you don’t really need to pull everything together. When it comes to bathroom décor, you want minimalism for the most part. The most impressive bathroom you can have is a clean one.

Stair decals are among the most ridiculous trends we found on Pinterest. These apply basically wallpaper to the empty spaces between each step. They end up making a whole image that becomes clearer when you are standing further away. While it might seem cool to look at for a second, its wow factor diminishes greatly at a second glance.

You don’t need to fill up every empty white space in your home. That’s how you end up with a home that looks much too busy. Stair decals make your staircase too busy and we definitely find them tacky. This trend is certain to go out of style quickly and that will mean you’ll be peeling them off just as soon as you put them on.

LED-lit shelves might seem like a good idea for displaying all of your collectibles and antiques, allowing you to look at them at any time of day, but it's probably for the best that you don’t. Decorations like that are meant to accent your room, not define it.

You’ll find LED-lit shelves in places like shoe stores so the store can highlight particular products. But your home is not a showroom, so you aren’t looking to display all your stuff like you are opening a museum. LED shelves might look cool, but they don’t offer welcoming home vibes.

Floating shelves are a trend that is both impractical and flat-out tacky. Floating shelves can quickly make a space look cluttered unless you are going to neatly display everything on them and put it back the same exact way every time.  Plus, if you have a cat, you can pretty much say goodbye to whatever you have up there.

And if you don’t have a specific use for a floating shelve and are just using them to display some décor, you are inevitably going to make your walls look cluttered. As we said earlier, you don’t have to fill up every empty space in your home with a bunch of stuff.

Both cheesy and ridiculous is the food-shaped pillow trend. From strawberry-shaped to croissant-shaped pillows, we aren’t sure what started the food-shaped throw pillow trend that’s all over Pinterest. Let food look like food and pillows look like pillows. You really don’t need a hybrid of the two to make your guests hungry.

If you want to express the fact that you don’t have a personality beyond liking food, then the food shaped throw pillow trend is definitely the one for you. We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everyone likes food, so a bread-shaped pillow isn’t saying anything about your personality other than maybe being a little quirky.

The ‘70s are long gone but apparently, someone forgot to tell Pinterest. Whatever the reason for the resurgence in ‘70s style décor, we are not on board. The décor trends of the ‘70s vanished and whatever feelings of nostalgia are blooming about it, they are temporary.

Investing in ‘70s style décor at this point in time is like throwing money in the toilet. You won’t hold onto the pieces for very long because they will eventually become outdated once again. Let the past stay in the past. Stick to décor that is relatively timeless and forget the nostalgia bandwagons.

This one is just strange. From leopard-shaped coffee tables to cow-shaped bookshelves, animal-shaped furniture looks awful. The only places where they could really work in a kid’s room, and you wouldn’t even put something coffee table in a kid's room to begin with.

On top of that, there’s very little that’s useful about a bookshelf shaped like a bunny, a cow, or a pig. You can’t fit very many books on it and it's awkward to put them on. There’s nothing wrong with a little simplicity in your life. We get it, you like animals. Your end table doesn’t need to say it that loud.

Too much signage is just obnoxious. You know you've gone too far when you start labeling everything in your kitchen or bathroom. It’s your kitchen, and you should know where everything is. If you have guests that don't know, just show them like a good host. Don’t ruin your space with signs everywhere.

A sign here and there is okay. Maybe you have a bread box or a canister that says coffee, but its easy to go overboard with the signs to the point that your décor is no longer cute. And if you need a sign for pasta because you can’t remember what pasta looks like, you probably shouldn’t be in the kitchen.