Home Design: Has "Mad Men" saved pink bathroom tiles?

"Mad Men" may be in scheduling limbo, but its revivalist aesthetics still echo strong ... especially in once-maligned pink bathrooms.

You've seen the HGTV shows, where the hammers can't come out quick enough when the pink bathroom surfaces. Every 10 episodes of "Designed to Sell" seems to showcase dejected owners bemoaning their misbegotten, rose-hued vision of the '50s.

Except, claims the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "decades of derision" have now given way to "retro chic," thanks to a renewed flush of confidence from the AMC show. One owner proudly dubbed her pink water closet and midcentury home (if you say midcentury, you immediately increase the value by 15%) her "Doris Day house." An HGTV claim that dubbed such rest stops a "pink plague" irked one Pam Kueber, whose 2008 Retro Renovation post launched a defiant, but very polite, "savethepinkbathrooms" movement.

The turnabout might justify surrendering to the pink, given these bathrooms' often indestructible nature. Kueber pointed out that '50s bathrooms used mud-set tile - a "lost art." (The art involves mixing fine sand and cement, laying in tarpaper. and a wire lathe, making a base that's nearly 2 inches high. You had us at "concrete.") Then again, all the more reason just to rent a wrecking ball - midcentury denial aside, a pink bathroom still inspires horror.

A quick look at "Mad Men" searches during the January hiatus reveals, little surprise, that fashion (from "ladies clothes mad men" to "mad men suits") is its leading influence, followed by food, hair styles, drinks, highball glasses, and makeup. Nothing about home design, mercifully, including bathrooms. Or bullet bras, for that matter.

And a peek into bathroom searches show an awful lot of New Year renovation activity, but the trend looks more to be "black and white bathrooms," "bathroom grey tile ideas" and "green bathrooms" (even "ming green bathrooms"). But, there's always a handful of people who have to have pink - if not "pink zebra print for bathroom."