Weirdcore Decor Is Set To Have Its Moment As A Hot 2023 Home Trend

If you live your life like the girl with kaleidoscope eyes — you know, from the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" — your style is poised to trend any time now. Yes, those who loved weird before weird was cool are positioned to go mainstream in 2023.

In essence, the weirdcore decorating trend stems from low-tech, amateurish photo editing popular about the time the internet was really heating up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as noted on Screenshot. These were a mash-up of real photos with other colorful graphics and low-budget special effects. The modern update combines all those things with the dreamlike expressions of traditional Surrealism as well as psychedelic imagery and colors channeling the late 1960s and early 1970s. This culminates in objects and artwork meant to strike you as odd or shocking and then grows on you as artsy.

Other names for the weirdcore aesthetic are dreamcore, oddcore, strangecore, and creepycore. All these very descriptive terms sum up the look. Read on for more specifics on how to incorporate some of these conversation starters into your own décor.

If an object has a dreamlike warp to it, most anything can work its way into weirdcore. Distorted smiley faces, anime characters, and melting clocks are all examples of motifs that crop up in this type of artwork and decorating style. If weirdcore had to be summed up in one word, though, it would be eyes — lots and lots of eyes.

These are often photographed eyes combined with graphic art. They can take the form of an eye in an unexpected place or an unusual combination like an eye with wings. They can also be combined with other ordinary items from strawberries to milk cartons in dreamlike graphics for a creepy-cool combo. If you've already got a sleek, modern vibe in your room featuring black and white, it's easy to incorporate this type of vibe into your décor.

Mushrooms also show up frequently in weirdcore decorating. These can be the likeness of garden-variety toadstools, but more frequently, they're funky red and white polka dot mushrooms. From vintage-style posters to string lights and candles, we're poised to see a multitude of mushrooms as this trend develops.

While some TikTokers are going all out with this trend, it doesn't mean you can't embrace this latest version of Surrealism in a subtler, more traditional way. After all, René Magritte's "The False Mirror," depicting an eye with clouds for an iris, laid the groundwork for all this weirdness in the 1920s, not to mention Salvador Dalí's melting clocks.

Given this melding of old and new, you can find prints of these and other Surrealist masterworks that offer an odd yet classic take on the trend to decorate your home. Many contemporary photographers and painters are also creating images like these now. The advantage of buying their work goes beyond supporting an artist. Your conversation-piece wall art will be all your own; no one else will have an exact duplicate.

If you'd prefer to keep it a little simpler and more inexpensive, throw pillows depicting winged eyes are a readily available option that can be switched out when you're ready to move on to another trend. Some decorators prefer adding an oddity to a shelf, like one of those red and white magic mushrooms in statue form. Bringing a pop-eyed garden frog indoors can also offer a way to punch up the weirdcore look without breaking the bank. And when the time is right, it can hop back out on the patio.