Tufted headboards are so finicky. They look amazing right up until they get stained by hair oil, sweat...or something even worse. They might look nice and feel soft when you buy them but they'll quickly turn into a grungy, smelly mess. Be prepared to blast that thing with Febreeze before your bedroom smells like a gym sock.
That giant, pillowy headboard might feel nice, but it truly is a dirt and grime magnet. Like, for real—you'd probably be able to collect a sample for a 23andMe test after having that thing in your bedroom for a week. When it comes to headboards, classic wood is definitely the way to go.
Wallpaper borders are one of the most egregious errors you can make in your bedroom. This may have been huge in the ‘90s, but that was 20 years ago. And they were wrong then, too! Wallpaper unlike a solid-colored wall becomes quickly outdated and fades, which means you'll eventually need to strip it all off - which is also a pain.
If you're still rocking wallpaper borders in your bedroom in the 21st century, we've got some bad news for you. You've basically made your bedroom look like a decades-old B&B haunted by someone's dead grandma. Maybe that's the vibe you're going for, but something tells us that is not the case!
Save the ruffles for your bed and breakfast. Who wants to sleep in a bed that looks like the one grandma kicked the bucket in? Ruffled bed skirts in this decade are for people trying to hide dirt or junk under their bed - maybe even a skeleton or two.
Bed skirts are just going to make your room look dated, and they're just another thing that needs to be washed and cared for. Extra laundry might not be tacky, per se, but no one wants to deal with it! Plus, if you're rocking a bed skirt, you're just begging for a monster to set up camp underneath there!
If you're raising a Scottish child, then by all means--go plaid crazy. Otherwise, you'll end up with a bedroom that looks immature and dated, and that's quite the feat to pull off. Plaid fabrics have no place in a modern bedroom and will certainly give your place a very put-together look.
Plaid in small amounts might look pretty good, but using it for a comforter or other major pieces in your bedroom is just going to be an eyesore. If you really can't imagine life without plaid, go for plaid sheets that you can hide from the world with a more normal-looking comforter.
There’s nothing worse than sliding into gross-feeling sheets or a creaky bed at the end of a long day. You’re going to spend a lot of time in that bed of yours. Make it worth your while. Don’t skip the good stuff. The bedding is just as important as your choice of mattress.
Cheap sheets aren't just a comfort problem, either—they have a tendency to look majorly tacky, too. You can find some truly insane patterns on cheap sheets that are just going to make your bedroom look worse. Think about it: have you ever actually seen luxury, comfortable sheets with zebra stripes or cheetah spots?
Is your bedroom a rock quarry? Are you stacking limestone on these pallets? Pallets are no place for a bedroom. Unless you are literally living in a warehouse, this look is just plain ugly and out of place. Please, for the love of all things good and holy, do not attempt to make this work.
The only conceivable place where a pallet bed might look decent is if you're going for some sort of farmhouse look in your bedroom, but then that's going to put you in tacky territory too! Good, old-fashioned bed frames are just not enough for some people, and that's led to some very tacky bedrooms!
Accent walls are just a nice way of saying your paint job looks lopsided. It's definitely a bedroom trend for the very indecisive. An accent wall is not going to make your paint job look any better. Anyone that gets up close is going to see that. This only looks decent in pictures, but the reality is horrifying.
While accent walls might look a little ridiculous, they do have one saving grace about them. Since an accent only covers one wall, it doesn't take too much effort to paint over your work once you realize what a bad idea it was! Stick with one color for all four walls—your bedroom will thank us.
Faux taxidermy is for cheaters and hipsters. If you want a buck on your wall, you should have to go out and hunt it like the rest of us, or better yet, if you aren't living in a hunting lodge maybe don't try to pretend that you are. Let the animals live and not be decorations for your wall.
Faux taxidermy might be fine if it wasn't so widely available. That gilded deer head might look a lot nicer in your bedroom if every Joe Schmo couldn't head down to Target and pick up one themselves. It's overdone, and everyone is thinking the same thing, even if they're too polite to say it to your face.
Lava lamps might have been a hit back in the day, but now they're the purview of teenagers and creeps, or those longing to return to the past. But you've grown up now and it's time to move on with your life. The '70s are over and they aren't coming back no matter how many aging rock star concerts you may be attending.
But we'll give credit where credit is due—the lava lamp had a serious moment both in the '70s and the '90s. But isn't two decades of dominance and popularity enough for this tacky lamp? It's time to put these away for good and move on to the next ridiculous, tacky decor trend!
We don't even have to make fun of water beds for them to seem like a bad idea. Who wants to be tossed and turned by the waves night after night? One mishap with a pet and you'll be sleeping in a puddle of water. And you are getting almost no support.
If you want to make a water bed look stylish in your bedroom, it's actually much easier than you might think. All you have to do is set your time machine to 1975 and start hosting swinger parties. For anyone without a time machine, it's probably time to drain those things and put them away for good.
Macramé is not decor. It's an art project your kids do that you begrudgingly hang up. Knotted yarn is not trendy, no matter what people try to tell you. We're sorry that anyone ever thought that it looked good because there was never even a time nor place where that was actually true.
Probably the worst thing about macrame decor is the overabundance of owls in this "art" form. We're not sure how this animal became the mascot of macrame, but we'd bet that at least 75% of macrame projects are owl-based. And in case it needs to be said, owls are not going to help your tacky bedroom problem any!
Yes, this is a thing. No, it should not be a thing. It needs to stay out of style. You’re not a ‘60s fashion model, and leopard print shouldn’t be on anything you own. You don't need to turn your bedroom into Mrs. Robinson's liar nor an homage to the Jersey Shore.
If you want leopard print in your home, the very least you could do is not be a coward about it. It's only fair that you have to hunt and skin your own, we think. Otherwise, you're just another decor-challenged person who thinks that leopard print will make you look wealthy or exotic.
Chevron blew up thanks to Pinterest. Also, thanks to Pinterest, it out-grew its welcome about two weeks after we first heard of it. Chevron patterns look just plain awful and you'll regret that you ever spent money on them soon enough. Opt for subtler, less trendy patterns like herringbone instead.
There are so many geometric patterns out there for home decor that there's really no reason for anyone to ever choose chevron again. Maybe in 100 years if Pinterest is just a distant memory by that point chevron will rise again, but, for now, we're glad that this one dead trend.
Once again, you haven't earned the right to throw a dead bear on the floor unless you've killed it yourself. That being said, why would you want to in the first place? Faux fur rugs have no place outside of a hunting lodge and hunting lodges arent exactly the pinnacle of interior design.
Faux fur is just a poor replacement for the real thing. It doesn't feel nearly as nice, and even an untrained eye can usually spot fake fur from a mile away. Real fur may be a rare luxury, but faux fur is annoyingly everywhere. An animal might have to die for a real fur rug, but a sweatshop worker probably had to stitch together that fake monstrosity you bought at Target.
Few things scream “Fresh-Out-of-College Bachelor” more than under bed lights. They’re up there with futons and Fight Club Posters. Dim lighting is great, but try to use lamps instead. Under-bed lights aren't going to impress anyone not in their early 20s and if you are looking to impress a date then forget about it.
Lighting under your bed just screams, "I'm up to no good!" even if you're on the straight and narrow. If you're capable of putting lights under your bed, what other crazy things are you capable of? This is one decor trend that's definitely a sign of bad judgment!
Neon walls seem like a great idea until you wake up in bed and immediately have a headache from the noisy colors. If you want a room to look loud and obnoxious then bright, bold colors are certainly the way. If you aren't decorating a kid's room, try more muted colors.
This doesn't mean you should go out and paint your walls black though, because then you're dealing with a completely different tacky decor problem! Bold colors might sound like a great idea when you're picking out paint at the store, but those neon yellow walls are going to feel a lot less fun and inviting when you wake up with a hangover.
Posters are great for college kids who are forced to pay for their decorations for the first time, but that’s about it. After that, upgrade to some actual art. Look around some local stores or make something yourself. And if you can’t seem to get away from that Harry Potter theme, check out Etsy for some cool, not-poster art.
You can try to class up your movie posters and the like all you want, with fancy frames and such, but you're not fooling anyone. Unless you're raising a family in a dorm, it's time to say goodbye to all those posters and come up with bedroom decor ideas that are a little more adult.
You might not live in a trailer, but you could have fooled me with those blankets you're using as curtains. Fake curtains serve no purpose whatsoever - other than to give the look that you actually have functional curtains. They are a lie and they make you look like a liar.
Fake curtain alternatives like blankets and sheets aren't just a tacky decor choice—they're also super soul-crushing. A little natural light is good for the body and mind every now and then, but nothing is getting past that old beach towel you hung up like a curtain! Tear down those curtains and get real.
Tapestries can be gorgeous, elaborate works of art, but they are finicky to get right. They need to perfectly balance out the hard and soft aspects of a room, and that’s rarely done well. Add in the fact that they are very frequently associated with some plant loving friends of ours from the ‘60s and you’ll have to think before including a tapestry in your bedroom.
Maybe "skeezy opium den" is the look you genuinely want for your bedroom. And if that's the case, then you keep on doing you. But for most people with tapestry-heavy decor, I don't think they realize how silly they make a room look. Apologies to all the tapestry weavers out there.
Nightstands are great ways to add both functionality and personality to a bedroom. They’re like people, though: they have to be compatible if they’re going to spend too much time together. If they aren’t things get tense. His and her nightstands should be exactly the same. Your bedroom shouldn't be a clashing space.
Not everyone is completely obsessed with symmetry in their decor choices, but I don't understand how anyone can look at a bed with different nightstands on either side and not have a conniption. It feels wrong, but, more importantly, it looks wrong, too! Just go ahead and buy two next time you're nightstand shopping.
Clearly, the person who invented this had way too much self-esteem. I barely want to look at myself in the bathroom mirror, much less my dresser. Mirrored dressers are completely unnecessary when most master bedrooms have a bathroom that has a mirror. They also take up way more space than a dresser should - space that could be used for more drawers.
This insane design choice just gets even more ridiculous the longer you think about it. A mirrored dresser isn't like a normal mirror—they're usually waist- or chest-high. That means you're getting your reflection at a ton of low, ridiculously unflattering angles. If you don't have body issues before you buy a mirrored dresser, you will afterward!
Plywood is the Bud Light of wood. If that analogy didn't make sense, don't worry--neither do plywood headboards. if you are living in the zombie apocalypse and need a makeshift headboard, by all means, go ahead with the plywood look, but otherwise, the look is just plain tacky. Get a real headboard.
We imagine that these tacky plywood headboards are probably less expensive than more elaborate, real wood ones, but if you're worried about affordability, there's another option to consider—no headboard at all. Some people might say that's tacky too, but it's definitely less tacky than plywood! There's just no way to make these look good.
You're decorating a bedroom, not a tiki bar from the 1960s. Leave the bananas in the tropics and keep your bedroom a little more temperate. I don't care how much you like bananas and banana leaves don't make a very apeeling motif for your bedroom. There are other plants out there to consider.
Plus, if you're putting up banana leaf wallpaper, your design judgment is clearly compromised. I'd be willing to wager that it's not the only tacky decor decision you've made in your bedroom. Banana leaf wallpaper is a gateway trend to tackier, more dangerous trends! Just say no to banana leaves.
Fonts can be beautiful, and when paired with a great quote, it seems like a great idea. But there are so many good quotes out there. Why limit yourself to just one? Instead of hanging typographic art, try a bookshelf instead. Books have plenty of good quotes in them. Quotes really don't belong on a wall.
And don't get us started on the whole "Live, Laugh, Love" trend. We sincerely hope you're doing all of those things and more in your home, but you definitely don't have to telegraph all that to the world. If you absolutely must put words on your bedroom walls, at least have some fun with it and put up something obscene.
You’re (probably) not a lumberjack. So, it’s a little odd to decorate your bedroom like you are. And even if you were, why would you decorate your bedroom with your job? Accountants (probably) don’t decorate their bedrooms with calculators. Try to get a little bit more of you in there.
If you need the outdoors inside, try hanging a painting instead. But if you can't live without that rustic lumberjack look, then you should put your money where your mouth is! Go out and find a nice remote cabin in the woods and have an authentic lumberjack experience for real.
