Pink baths: Are they hot or not?

don smith/staff photographer

Pink tiles, popular in the 1950s, are maligned today but praised for their construction. Some find the color attractive.

When Stacey Lopis' friends see the bathroom in her 1960-vintage Hawthorne ranch, they all say the same thing: "You have to get rid of the pink tile."

Pink bathrooms.

They were built by the millions in 1950s and 1960s ranches, Capes and split-levels, but they get no love from today's home buyers even the young buyers who are drawn to other midcentury styles in architecture and design.

"As much as the midcentury modern look is back, it's still something that people are not going to find appealing," said Gary Silberstein, a real estate agent with Keller Williams in Woodcliff Lake. "Barbie's not back."

But one lover of 1950s design says pink bathrooms deserve more respect.

"Pink bathrooms are emblematic of the design of the period," said Pam Kueber, who started the websites savethepinkbathroom.com and retrorenovation.com after buying a 1950s ranch in Lenox, Mass. "If people could get their heads around pink bathrooms, they'd understand why something that looks so shocking today is actually a very appealing and wonderful thing."

Kueber said developers of suburban tract homes started installing pink bathrooms after first lady Mamie Eisenhower popularized the color when she wore a rhinestone-studded blush ball gown to her husband's inauguration in 1953.

Kueber started savethepinkbathrooms.com after watching people rip them out with "sledgehammer glee" on TV home-improvement shows.

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Pink baths: Are they hot or not?