8 Kitchen Appliance Colors That Dominated The ’70s

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The 1970s were definitely a unique decade in terms of style. While you know you’re from the ’70s if you had certain things in your kitchen, beyond the gadgets, there were also distinct colors that distinguished culinary spaces. The pinks and blues and other pastel hues of the previous generation gave way to earth tones and nature-inspired shades, and appliances began rolling off the assembly line in muted oranges, browns, yellows, and greens. Some brighter shades (technically inspired by nature as well, depending where in nature you looked) snuck in, too.

Who’s to say what leads each generation to embrace the styles that ultimately come to define it? All we know is the ’70s color palette looked something like the jarred products in a baby food aisle, or perhaps an autumnal farmer’s market that only sells avocados and gourds. With today’s stainless steel appliances and sleek, clean, modern kitchens, some of the design choices our forebears made may seem questionable to us. On the other hand, everything old eventually becomes new again. Many retro kitchen items are making a trendy return, and folks are also embracing those midcentury colors in their cooking and dining spaces once again (though with some modern reinvigorations). Some are even painting new-model appliances in the old-school colors to recapture that retro essence.

Come along with us on this retrospective to take a look at yesterday’s color wheel and the shades that drove the designs of a decade. You might find yourself hungry for pumpkin pie or avocado toast as we roll along, so prepare some snacks for the virtual journey.

Coloring all manner of appliances from fridges to ranges, a shade that history has come to call Avocado Green dominated kitchen design in the 1970s. The precise name of the hue fluctuated a bit depending on the appliance maker — for instance, General Electric called its version Fresh Avocado — but a stove by any other name was still an intense, somewhat moldy-looking green.

Another popular color found on kitchen appliances across the land was Harvest Gold, a dulled yellow that appeared in various mustardy shades, all of which still clearly fell into that “Harvest Gold” category. The GE appliance line called its version “Harvest Wheat,” for example; similar shades were sometimes referred to as Mustard Yellow, Harvest Yellow, and Golden Yellow. The color showed up on everything from dishwashers and ovens to electric mixers and electric kettles.

Kitchen appliances with a reddish-brown tint also dotted cooking spaces in a hue known as Coppertone Brown (sometimes called “Copper Brown”). Also known by other names, including Cocoa and Coffee, this vintage color gave a deep, warm vibe to all manner of kitchen appliances. We can’t help wondering if having a deep brown fridge, stove, and dishwasher had homemakers constantly craving chocolate.

Looking more like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar should be hurling it toward a basket than that it should be coloring kitchen appliances, Burnt Orange (also known by names such as “Rusty Orange”) was pretty much as its name suggested. Homeowners were all about this color in the ’70s, though, which commonly appeared on large appliances as well as on smaller kitchen gadgets.

Showing up in a beige-ish shade that looked much like the inner flesh of the nut it was named for, Almond appeared on 1970s appliances ranging from refrigerators to toasters. Even electric frying pans, a vintage kitchen appliance that put oven ranges to shame, were trotted out in shades of Almond.

A more vibrant color that still somehow managed to look muted at times when applied to appliances was Poppy Red. Much brighter than its subdued color compatriots, this shade never quite got the same footing during the ’70s as other tints, so vintage models are rarer to find on the secondhand market.

While we think of ’70s kitchens as being uniquely colorful, the reality is that clean, classic white was there, too. While white may not be as exciting of a color pop, white appliances were nonetheless plentifully present in many ’70s kitchens amid the more in-your-face hues, showcased with retail names such as Snow White.

The GE appliance line in the 1970s also included a black shade called Onyx, with other appliance makers similarly parading out kitchen machines, such as refrigerators, in glossy black splendor. One example was the Admiral company — maker of the first color televisions — whose line of refrigerator/freezers in the ’70s included an impressive-looking lacquered black model with side-by-side fridge and freezer compartments and a unique split freezer door.