Cringe, a hotly debated term of disparagement, its flames fanned in all corners of the internet, is present—and the design world is not exempt from its tight clutches. While many influencers, tastemakers, and content creators that occupy this space share all the things they love without abandon, many have no qualms about sharing what home decor trends they can’t stand. Unsurprisingly, these personalities have thousands of followers who adore them specifically for their hot takes.
In fact, a few of the interior design aficionados that we consulted for this report have already publicly shared their opinions about some of the design trends that they hate to their cores: “8 Interior Design Trends that are Dying in 2023,” “The Worst Interior Design Mistakes,” and “So-Called Hot Interior Design Trends That No One Is Actually Doing” are a few examples.
Nevertheless, we still look to those with an eye for style for guidance. While we like to think of ourselves as experts on the subject, we couldn’t think of anyone more qualified to tell us what home decor trends should be left to rot in the gutter this year. So, here are the unfiltered opinions of eight of our favorite interior design gurus from YouTube and TikTok on the worst of the worst (and cringiest of the cringe) home decor trends right now.
Fast furniture that makes your home look like an uncurated catalog
Kiva Brent and Kellie Brown both agree that fast furniture and mass market retailers can be cringey, but for slightly different reasons. For the biochemist-turned-interior-stylist Kiva, it’s about keeping things sustainable and responsible by investing in something that you won’t want to give away anytime soon; for example, “Finding old furniture pieces that are still great and actually taking the time to search for them,” she adds.
Kellie, a content creator more commonly known as @DeeplyMadlyModern on TikTok and Instagram, is particularly perturbed by consumers being a little too inspired by the merchandising at mass market retailers and “trying to have their house look like a catalogue.” Kellie adds, “It’s so impersonal, it’s so not curated.” Similar to Kiva, she also stresses how a sustainable approach can also be the most stylish and suggests “getting things secondhand, being scrappy, going out to the places to get one of a kind, or unique, or used things.”
Cluttercore is the new “hoarder without the mold” maximalist
Nick Lewis attributes this microtrend to the pendulum swing from Scandinavian or midcentury-modern-inspired minimalism, both of which were lovingly adopted by millennials. But more can be far too much when it’s “maximalist for the sake of maximalism,” or the overwhelming amount of objects in a room read as “hoarder without the mold,” as Lewis likes to say.