Hardware Styles That Instantly Date Your Home

If you find some joy or amusement in being baffled, trying to get a handle on outdated home hardware is a great way to start living your best life. After only a few moments, you'll be convinced that even the most thoughtful designers have ventured into "two designers, three opinions" territory. Matte black, chrome, and crystal are all dated, you'll learn, but weirdly enough, their replacements aren't all that different from them. Yet, it makes sense when you look closer and discover that it all hinges on authenticity.

The common and somewhat superficial analogy comparing hardware to jewelry contains useful information about how to keep loving a look that's considered dated. The distinction is this: Jewelry is timeless, but costume jewelry is anything but. If you sincerely love the way your glass or crystal doorknobs can add dimension and personality with refracted light, no one will begrudge your refusal to let them go. But if you love your knobs because they match the faucet handles on your mirrored hot tub, that's a whole different kettle of chips.

What makes a design element "outdated" is our ability to recognize it and associate it with some other trend that happened at some other time. You might look at oil-rubbed bronze hardware and honey oak cabinets and fear that your time machine has stalled before getting all the way back to Don Draper's apartment. But both of those things are making a comeback, transforming from dated elements into classic staples by embracing their natural character.

If we're sure of anything, it's that no one's sure what the future holds for matte black hardware. Some designers may tell you it's still fine, while others will say it's done already. Many suggest that it still works but matte black hardware will eventually make your space look stuck in the past.

Micaela Quinton, director of design at Copper Sky Design + Remodel, explains that matte black has crossed the frontier between upscale and ordinary. '[It's] become so commonplace over the last 10 years, especially in flip renovations and spec homes, that it now reads as builder-grade," she told the Martha Stewart website. On their way out are the builder-default flat black bars, knobs, and plumbing fixtures that lack any particular character or quality other than matte-blackness.

On the other hand, you can get a lot of the contrast-y value and overall elegant feel from finishes that aren't perceived as outdated, like blackened steel or bronze. And it depends on context to some extent. It's hard to imagine a tastefully appointed kitchen with a comforting warm white (say, Martha Stewart's Picket Fence) on the cabinets and matte-black hardware looking truly dated at this point. Just as the right knobs, pulls, and hinges may rescue slightly outmoded cabinetry, timeless cabinets can rescue slightly passé hardware. What seems most likely is that the two-dimensional spaces we've reserved for matte black will be deepened and filled by warmer, more complex dark alternatives like time-worn brass and dark pewter.

There's a bit of a hierarchy to home hardware in terms of impact ... which is to say that people notice some things but not everything. If you were replacing your hardware, you might start with the high-impact cabinetry hardware and move on to the faucets and lighting. If you still feel compelled to spend money, you could then swap out the door hardware throughout your home. But when you do any of this, don't fall prey to another stylistic approach that can make your decor feel like a 1990s RV: matchy-matchy everything.

Let's start with the fact that you don't have to match most things at all. Matching all your hardware is the opposite of the kind of curation that makes your home truly yours. You've traded the opportunity to truly love individual pieces for a finish, and that's a bad trade. A mix of knobs and pulls and multiple complementing finishes work better to make the space look and feel more custom-designed.

Things should look cohesive, of course (unless incoherent is the look you're going for). Matchy-matchy is when you take that too far and make things identical. There was a time when this was thought to be desirable, but now the aesthetic brings to mind that period rather than the sorts of things you want to say about yourself with your collections. And that, presumably, is not that you only had one idea and applied it to everything.

Another statement you don't want your home's hardware to make is "Hey! You! Look at me! Over here! Here I am! Look!" And this is, unfortunately, the net effect of having a lot of shiny silver and gold hardware in your home. Highly reflective finishes create a mirror that not many people want to actually look into, and when there are dozens of other mirror finishes in a room, it's easy to get caught in a dizzying light-speed web of splintered and redirected attention.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't have eye-catching finishes, focal points, or statement pieces. A grand chrome tub faucet in an otherwise understated bathroom looks exciting and can even be a seamless fit. But too much of a good thing is, well, some other thing, and a bunch of shiny objects in a space won't give the eye much rest.

In a way, shine comes with a responsibility to say something more. Without that kind of consideration, "flashy" gold or chrome doesn't always age well and may easily look cheap. It can also cheapen other finishes in the room, since superficiality skates right on the surface and is happy to bounce off of banker's lamps, cabinet handles, and faucets until you're blinded by the millimeter-deep luxury.

Clear hardware is one of those topics you can't seem to get a straight answer on. One designer will proclaim that it's all abhorrent and cheap-looking, while others announce with great fanfare that faceted crystal is just the thing to reinvent your space. And as we're seeing again and again this year, both sides have a point (but especially the side that warns about crystal hardware being a key reason why your bathroom looks outdated).

This comes directly back to the authenticity and costume jewelry issue. Elevating your space is good and proper, but overdoing it can easily blow you through the ceiling like Willy Wonka on a glam kick. A single vintage glass doorknob mounted in corroded brass will look infinitely more dignified than a room full of shimmering miniature disco balls all vibrating at the frequency of surgical suite lighting. Crystal and glass, like mirrors, multiply the visuals and vibe of a room. Grounded with some warmth and moderation, they add depth. But a crystal wash with nothing to offset its coldness can look, as real estate pro Mac Rogers describes it, "like a 2012 Vegas hotel suite."

If there's a way to tie up all of these dated trends in a single symbol, it might be the tale of oil-rubbed bronze. Here is a material with a history so rich it has an age named after it, an alloy with such character that it alone can be trusted with the demands placed upon marine hardware, industrial bearings, and the encoding of history in dramatic statuary. But it has been laid low by builder-grade knockoffs, rods and chunks of steel-plated or powder-coated hardware that suggest a moment in the history of bronze ... at least until the finish starts scratching or chipping off.

Living finishes on metals change over time as oxidation, various environmental elements, and daily use produce a patina on them. Sometimes, as with oil-rubbed bronze, patina can be directed and controlled toward a deep brown on black richness. But coated finishes or a DIY oil-rubbed bronze look on your home's hardware, as opposed to the patinated real thing, won't show the same age and may make their artificial nature more apparent. We've come to associate modern oil-rubbed bronze equivalents with the period of its greeted popularity rather than that beautifully deep texture and unique richness that made them so appealing in the first place. So, oil-rubbed bronze and other fake living finishes are out ... but the real deal is, and always will be, available to you.