Art Deco arrived in the 1920s and changed everything. Buildings stopped trying to look like Greek temples and started looking like the future. Sharp angles, geometric patterns, sunburst motifs, chrome, glass, and colour. So much colour.
The style spread from Paris across the world in less than a decade. Cinemas, hotels, apartment blocks, factories, swimming pools. In Britain you can still find it in seaside towns, in London boroughs, in the suburbs where developers in the 1930s built homes with curved bay windows and stepped rooflines and front doors with stained glass panels in mint green and rose pink.
The details are what make these buildings special. Terrazzo floors with geometric borders in peach and cream. Vitrolite panels in pale blue. Chrome stair rails with fluted columns. Bakelite door furniture in butterscotch and jade. Plaster ceiling roses with fan patterns picked out in gold and duck egg.
Most of these materials are no longer manufactured. Restoring them means finding craftspeople who understand the originals and can either repair what survives or recreate what has been lost. It is slow, careful work. But when a building comes back to life with its original palette of soft pinks, muted greens, warm creams, and gentle lilacs, the result is something that no modern finish can replicate.