You may love Mid Century Modern design, but what does it actually take to create a MCM style home? We’ve compiled five essential characteristics to Mid Century Modern style and how to incorporate them into your home.
Clean Lines
Mid Century Modern style was created as a way to reimagine traditional design styles. It’s all about sleek, clean lines. This includes geometric shapes and also organic ones. The furniture typically has skinny pegs or tapered legs. Clean lines emphasize the simplicity of MCM style, which brings us to the next characteristic.
Minimalist
Mid Century Modern design focuses on minimalism. It values functionality and simplicity. Every room and every piece of furniture should have some sort of purpose. Choose staple pieces that say a lot, but are also practical. Mid Century Modern is characterized by a marriage of form and function. Part of its enduring legacy is simply because this emphasis led to durable and designer-driven pieces.
Indoor/Outdoor Connection
A mix of indoor and outdoor elements is key to Mid Century Modern design. Plants are an easy and common tool of doing so. (Some of our favorites include monstera, fiddle leaf fig, prayer plant, snake plant, ZZ tree, dragon tree and umbrella plants.) Blurring the lines between indoors and outdoors is a feature of Mid Century Modern architecture. For instance, floor to ceiling windows create a visual flow, extending the home’s interior connection to the outdoors. Many MCM homes include skylights or celerestory windows and open floor plans, allowing natural light to be the star. These open layouts, often in one-story, ranch-style homes often have sliding glass doors, allowing for easy flow between the inside and out.
Colors
Colors are a major aspect of MCM design. Typically, there is a blend of muted and neutral tones, like black, white and wood tones, with pops of vibrant colors, like orange, brown, mustard yellow, ochre, or green. Colors are another way to blend indoor and outdoor. Try earthy greens and fall oranges and yellows to accomplish this.
Mixing Materials and Textures
Like the colors this era, Mid Century Modern tends to use what typically would be seen as contradicting styles. MCM style mixes different materials and textures, so don’t be afraid to experiment with different pieces. Wood is traditional to MCM style, but also combined with plastic, formica and acrylic, or synthetic and organic materials. Like any design movement, there were different approaches within Mid Century Modern. The more organic designers included George Nakashima while synthetic materials appear more often in the work of Eero Saarinen. (For more on the Space Age subset of Mid Century Modern design, see Bringing Back the Space Age’s Futuristic Artifacts.)
These are just a few of the many characteristics that make Mid Century Modern design what it is, but these are the keys to creating a MCM style home.
Looking to get up to speed on the names and style of Mid Century Modern design? Check out our explainer on Mid Century Modern, and keep reading our Modernist Index. Here at Atomic Ranch, Mid Century Modern style is our bread and butter! Subscribe to the print issue, buy the book, and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest for more Atomic Ranch articles and ideas!
