Interior design, especially in the hospitality sector is taking on a new era. Restaurants understand that the Gen Z and millennial clientele view dining as an experience, so a simple chair and table layout just won’t suffice anymore.

Especially when the culture ordering online, everything at your doorstep has become the everyday normal, actually drawing out a crowd to come visit a restaurant setting is difficult. What brings out the young crowd, however, is something unique and appealing, above all something instagram worthy.

Picking out a theme and curating your interior design to give a restaurant the look and the ambience that it needs to stand out in a crowd is not just a wish but a need at this point. 

While looking to create a unique and pleasant dining experience for your guests, pinning down a concept or a style can prove to be particularly helpful. It helps one narrow down everything from the layout to the elements to create the perfect surroundings.

Drawing from retro is all the rage at the moment, making it a great theme for restaurants. Looking to incorporate the peppy and fun 1980’s themed interior design in particular is an interesting prospect for a restaurant. 

Here are some elements from 1980’s interior design that you can take inspiration from to give your restaurant a different look: 

AN 80’s INSPIRED COLOR SCHEME 

The color scheme is the primary element in any space. The kind of colors picked helps develop the entire theme and develop a pleasant interior design. To draw from the 1980’s design aesthetic, picking a similar color palette can help develop the design of the space well.

The color scheme for this aesthetic is all about bright bold and fun tones. While primarily mauve and green tones were given a lot of attention, pastels too shone bright. The interior design was made to be a riot of colors thrown together, often in combinations to create an eclectic atmosphere.

Drawing from the same, you could form a set of bright pastels that complement each other. Try to bring in bright and eye-catching colors throughout the design. If you wish to keep it simple, you could opt for a lighter mauve or sea green tone throughout the space. 

GIVE YOUR FLOOR A PATTERNED TWIST 

Flooring is an important element, especially in the 80’s interior design. Stepping away from the simple and boring flooring concepts, this aesthetic offers a new and fresh alternative.

To align the flooring with an 80’s fun theme, skip the similar floors throughout and instead go for patterns and prints to enliven the place. This would mean either going for printed floor tiles and rugs, or actually creating geometric or abstract patterns utilizing different colored tiles.

Patterned floors are characteristic to the 80’s theme and thus important to make the restaurant have a quirky vibe about it. You could try a triangular pattern, an abstract print or go for the timeless checkerboard floors for a fun look. 

REIMAGINE THE WALLS

The wall design is what makes the place what it is. To go all out with the 80’s theme, giving your wall a peppy makeover is the way to go. Whether you choose to create an accent wall, or go all out, the idea should be to have a bright and colorful outlook.

You can choose to go for paints, or wallpapers depending on what works best for your space. For a simple and classic way to go, incorporating floral prints and elements could help you give the place a sophisticated look. Alternatively you could swap for a fun and vibrant theme by creating vibrant abstract and geometric patterns throughout the walls.

You could also add in some definition by utilizing neon paints that shine literally. Opting for line drawing, caricatures or even grid patterns can be helpful to give the place a retro look to it. 

OPEN UP THE KITCHEN 

Open kitchen designs were a rather loved feature in the 80’s interior design making it a key feature of the restaurant design as well. Opening up the kitchen essentially translates to bringing the kitchen or at least a part of it to the forefront and up for display.

The idea behind developing such an open concept is to give the palace an immersive element as well as make it look bigger. If you can manage to bring certain operations to the outside portion of the kitchen, it would help you create the effect in a subtle manner. You could add a kitchen island aligned with the theme to house this part of the kitchen.

If you can not bring out the operations in any way, you could go for a glass window or partition between the dining space and the kitchen which gives a peek into the kitchen yet keeps it separate enough. 

LIGHTING FOR FUN 

Lighting is one of the most important things to transform the ambience of any place. Fun and edgy lighting was a huge part of the 80’s interior realm. The central thought is to utilize a lot of colorful and bright lights to accentuate the place.

To do so, a popular pick from the 80’s and even a favorite for today’s generation of diners is the utilization of colored neon lights. Neon lights can be found in a variety of hues to be put together or used to have one tone throughout the space.

You could also get creative by choosing to utilize the neon lights in different shapes or even as part of the showpieces and wall art to enhance the look of a place.

To put a modern twist on it, going for a neon quote light or simply the name of the restaurant in a similar format could give it something extra. 

QUIRKY FURNITURE FOR THE WIN 

A far cry from the simple dinette sets and classy patio furniture, the 80’s vibe is all about giving quirky and eclectic things a chance, which also includes the furniture that you pick. You can take two different approaches or pair the two for a unique look.

The first way to go is to go for simpler furniture designs, but bring about a dash of quirk with the upholstery or colors that you pick. You could go for fun neon tones or vibrant hues to complement the space. Alternatively, rich textured fabrics in jewel tones or even in airy prints could help give it a different look.

To go for a completely different approach, you could switch up the way your furniture looks by going for bold accent pieces to switch up the dining space.

Be it a live edged glass table, the much loved 80’s lucite furniture, or different shapes of sofas, such furniture can help develop the fun ambience for the place. 

GREENERY IS YOUR BEST FRIEND

Unlike what one may imagine, there was a lot of space for greenery amidst the eclectic quirk of the 80’s interior design. Plants were very well utilized in the interior design as a way to cut through the richness of colors, and give an extra pop of color and freshness to any space.

Incorporating greenery to the restaurant too can have the similar effect while helping to echo with the call for sustainability and biophilic designs which are very in demand at the moment. Bold and hefty tropical plants in particular were a huge hit alongside hanging planters, to give the palace a foretsy richness.

You could add on to the theme by customizing the planets to go best with the theme or even add lights to accentuate such pieces. 

MEMPHIS DESIGN ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE 

Driven by Memphis Milano group of architecture, Memphis design came to be a recurring theme in the 80’s interior design. The basics of Memphis design is essentially an overload of prints design and patterns, and rather different ones.

It brought about the use of bright geometric features, patterns such as polka dots, zigzag lines, squiggly lines, and abstract colorful shapes. Such elements were well featured and cna be a perfect fit in an 80’s inspired restaurant.

The memphis design approach can be taken from the flooring to the walls to the furniture or even the textiles used in the space to truly resonate with the 80s design. 

Overall, restaurant owners are looking to reimagine their rspace to make it unique and appealing to today’s crowd. In doing so, various concepts have been embraced. A rather great oen to try out would be the peppy 1980s interior design to transform the way a restaurant looks. Full of colors, bright lights, and prints, this style is unique and fun, perfect for the crowd in today’s time, offering a different perspective to dining.