Indoor Plumbing Was Once a Trend, Too

On timeless design, trendy design, and the one opinion that actually matters — yours.

Q Home Plans  ·  Dallas–Fort Worth  ·  6 min read

In 1940, nearly half of American homes had no complete indoor plumbing — no full bathroom, no hot and cold water at the tap. Fifty years later, that number was about one percent.

Somewhere in between, indoor plumbing stopped being a trend and started being a given. Nobody today calls a bathroom “trendy.” But once it was the new thing — an upgrade some traditionalists dismissed as unnecessary, even a little vulgar. Every timeless standard you can name was, at some point, a trend that hadn’t proven itself yet.

“Timeless vs. trendy” is a false choice

We hear it framed as a moral decision. Timeless is tasteful and wise; trendy is foolish and fleeting. Choose correctly, or regret it.

That framing doesn’t hold up — and too often, it’s a polite way of telling you your taste is wrong. A trend is simply design responding to how people actually live now. Some trends are shallow and will age badly. Plenty of others are genuinely better ideas that just haven’t finished spreading yet. The open kitchen, the walk-in closet, the mudroom, the covered patio — all “trends” once. The skill isn’t avoiding trends. It’s telling the good ones from the fads.

A little humility from our side of the table

Here’s something our industry doesn’t always admit: designers have never agreed on what “good taste” even is.

The most famous line in modern architecture is Mies van der Rohe’s “less is more.” The second most famous is Robert Venturi’s reply, in 1966: “less is a bore.” Two giants of the field, flatly opposed, both right in their own way — and the argument still isn’t settled sixty years later.

If the profession’s own legends can’t agree on taste, no one has the authority to overrule you inside your own home.Our position, plainly

So when someone tells you your preferences are simply wrong — that you must go minimalist, or must go traditional, or must tear out the thing you love — it’s fair to be a little skeptical. We think about it differently. You’re the one who lives there. We’re advisers, not authorities. Our job is to give you the full picture — what’s durable, what’s risky, what it costs, what it’s worth later — and then help you build what you actually want.

Trends grow up into “timeless”

Take the open floor plan. Frank Lloyd Wright was opening up interiors around 1901; by the 1950s the ranch house made it ordinary; today more than 80% of buyers want at least a partly open kitchen and dining area. That’s the whole life of a trend — radical, then common, then simply expected.

And it’s still moving. After 2020, plenty of families discovered a wide-open house has no quiet corner for a video call. Architects felt it too:

Even the front porch tells the story. It faded for decades as cars and air conditioning pulled life indoors — and today 81% of buyers want one back. “Timeless,” it turns out, is mostly just a trend that earned its keep.

And some “timeless” homes aren’t all that nice to live in

The flip side is worth saying plainly. Not everything timeless is good. The formal living room nobody’s allowed to sit in. The grand, “correct” floor plan that’s cold and closed and fights the way your family actually moves through a day. Plenty of classic homes are lovely in photographs and joyless in person.

Timeless isn’t automatically right. Trendy isn’t automatically wrong. The only test that matters is whether the home works — for the people who live in it.

The data is on the homeowner’s side

Look at what people actually ask for and it isn’t fashion for its own sake — it’s comfort, function, and daylight. The 2024 NAHB buyer study puts the most-wanted features front and center:

And “trendy” updates, done tastefully, are often the smartest money in the house. The 2025 Cost vs. Value report found the highest returns aren’t in grand renovations — they’re in the current, curb-appeal updates some people dismiss as superficial:

A fresh garage door returned an estimated 268% of its cost at resale. A new steel entry door, 216%. Stone veneer, 208%. The “safe, do-nothing, it’s-always-been-fine” choice isn’t always the wise one. Sometimes the tasteful, current update is the highest-return decision on the whole property.

So how do you tell a good trend from a fad?

This is where we’re genuinely useful — not by handing down verdicts, but by asking better questions:

• •  Does it fit how you actually live — not how a magazine says you should?
• •  Does it work with the bones and the region of your home, or fight them?
• •  Would you still like it if it weren’t trending right now?
• •  And if you ever sell — does the data say it holds value, or evaporates?

That last question is exactly why we publish a mid-year trends report. Not to tell you what to do — to hand you the map. We rate each shift with an honest confidence level, so you can see which are durable directions and which are just this season’s noise. You make the call; we make sure it’s an informed one.

Sources. U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Census of Housing (Plumbing). NAHB, What Home Buyers Really Want (2024). AIA Home Design Trends Survey, via Pro Remodeler. Zonda, 2025 Cost vs. Value Report. Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966); Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “less is more.”