Let's be honest. Most of us do not live in truly mid century modern homes, especially locally where our store is located in Omaha, Nebraska. A few of our customers do have marvelous, MCM homes with the modern roofline, beautiful woodwork and atomic flourishes. But what about the rest of us? Will mid century modern furniture and decor work for your home?
To answer that, let's look at a few common homes in our area. For the purposes of keeping this post from becoming too lengthy, I'm making this a three-part series discussing three styles of homes: Mid Century Modest, Traditional, and Contemporary.
Mid Century Modest
Do you live in a ranch? There's a good chance that you do. Ranch homes are some of the most common homes in the United States as well as here in the Midwest. "Ranch" houses are horizontal, one story homes that became popular post World War II during the housing boom. These homes were easy to build when creating whole new subdivisions. (We live in one such neighborhood locally - our house was built in 1958). By 1950, 9 out of 10 houses in the US that were built were ranches!
Did you know that "ranch" houses began with designs by Clifford May in California in the 1930s?
Here in Omaha, most ranches in areas like ours, are built in the mid century decades, including the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but many are not mid century modern. Retro Renovation calls these homes "mid century modest". Mid Century Modest homes have similarities with their modern counterparts, while also having more traditional elements.
The site West South has a handy diagram showing the difference between modern and regular ranch designs. The article brings out that the roofline is a big distinguishing factor. The article goes on to show several different ranch styles, including Farmhouse, Rambler, Storybook and Colonial to name a few.
Some original features in our own home that we feel lend themselves to a mid century modern aesthetic are our stone fascia and fireplace, our stair railing and tile floor in our foyer, although we are in a mid century modest ranch.
If you are a fan of mid century modern style or just looking to add the high quality furniture to your home, here are our top tips for you! Let us know if you have a Mid Century Modest home and any tips you would add!
You can find many of the elements suggested above at our store, A Little More Like Home (everything except the bright front door and paneling!) We have a wide selection of vintage mid century modern furniture, artwork and decor. We also carry modbox USA Mailboxes that can be installed by Rob from Omaha Mailbox Mayhem.