Retro Kitchen Images From The 1940s and 1950s Scrapbook

Retro Kitchen Images From The 1940s and 1950s Scrapbook

Comments 6 comments
kitchen image vintage style
figcaption>white and green and coral colored 1940’s kitchen with built in table, green tile back splash, stainless steel countertop and pretty inlaid stripe linoleum floor.  This is my favorite color scheme of all the kitchens out of the scrapbook

For the last few weeks, we have been without a working printer/ scanner but finally bought a new one this week.  I decided to try it out by scanning more images from Mrs. Crabtree’s 1940’s and 1950’s home decorating scrapbook.  If you want to read my post about how I ended up with the scrapbook and what’s in it, click here.  It takes a while to scan and crop each picture, so I am just working on the images in small batches, basically when I have a little free time.   Today I worked on some of the many vintage 40s and 50s kitchens she clipped decades ago.  I find it delightful that back then, designers used vibrant colors on every surface, including the walls, floors, countertops, and cabinets.  I wish more of the old kitchen pictures from the scrapbook were in color, but the really early ones are generally in black and white.  Here are the retro kitchens that have been scanned so far….

retro kitch scrapbook
I like the three color linoleum inlay floor in this one a lot. The new green floor we put in our kitchen has the marble look and border like this, but only two colors. Each color and additional stripe we wanted to add increased the installation quotes by about $1000.
vintage kitchen image
Grey streamline kitchen with metal cabinets from the late 1940’s or early 1950s.  Another kitchen with a cool vintage inlay striped linoleum floor
1950s kitchen design
Pink and green 1940’s kitchen with solid black marble looking linoleum flooring
1950s retro kitcken
Dark Coral Pink, cream, and black retro 1940’s or early 1950s kitchen. This picture is from a large Armstrong flooring ad for linoleum. I love the patterning on the linoleum with the inlay edging and wish they still made flooring that looked like this.

These are just a sampling of the treasures in there.  In the meantime, I have another post with some of the bathrooms.

6 thoughts on “Retro Kitchen Images From The 1940s and 1950s Scrapbook”

  1. Thanks for sharing! We bought a 1949 built house and all the character had been removed. 🙁 I am looking for ideas and inspiration. I found some here.

    Reply
  2. Pingback: The Triangle Theory - The Kitchen Design Centre

  3. So homey. My mom’s kitchen is 50’s ranch with metal cabinets that have gray marbleized counter tops.. Recently removed the carpeting to find the original linoleum with a red boarder gong around the cabinets

    Reply

  4. I absolutely love 40’s and 50’s kitchens. Actual I love the furniture from that era too. Thanks for sharing your pictures. I have couple of scape books that my Mom made when she was a teenage girl in the early 1940’s. She would cut or gather pictures from magazines dreaming of how she would decorate her own home one day. Life seemed so innocent back then.

    Reply

  5. Love these pics! Thanks. Now I have some ideas. I own a whole kitchen of metal cabinets and want to some day build a home and use them. People are crazy to think kitchens with these retro cabinets are ugly. They are sooooo cooooool.

    Reply

    1. I am glad the pictures help with some designs ideas. You are fortunate to have vintage metal kitchen cabinets. They sell for a premium to antique and retro home improvement enthusiasts now a days. And I love them too! I have only seen one house locally that still had them, and I agree, they are so cool. My housing track was all built with thin wood cabinets because all available scrap metal was going to the war effort, not home building.

      Reply

I would love to know what you think about this.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.