If you feel your home lacks personality and unique elements that truly reflect you, introducing antique decor is a really great way to do this. It’s as equally stylish as it is a connection to the past — perhaps your past if you have heirloom pieces or items collected from your travels for example.
How to Tell Your Story With Antiques
Your home style should reflect your personality and individual narrative. For some people, this means including personal treasures and period-inspired relics.
In our forever home renovation which we’ve just completed, I’ve personally woven antiques, second hand items and heirloom pieces into our scheme such as the bathroom mirror which was a wedding gift to my nan and grandad in 1949, thrifted items from our local charity shops and pieces collected from our travels.
You may have deep connections to specific items with sentimental value or want to spotlight collectibles related to your culture, interests and hobbies. All of this amounts to decor that is pretty special and totally unique.
Carefully curated items should be conversation starters and set a particular mood, such as cosy, refined or upbeat. However you decide to use antiques, they can enhance your living area to represent your identity, stories and memories.
What Antiques Should You Thrift?
You might wonder where you can find intriguing antiques and furniture for your home. Fortunately, you can usually buy quality items at an affordable price at thrift stores or antique shops, as well as Facebook Marketplace.
I’ve been so lucky with our local shops and Facebook pages, such as picking up vintage weighing scales and weights, stoneware and rustic wood bowls, vases and jugs, arm chairs, vintage rug and even a woven coffee table!
If you love to travel, thrift stores usually carry numerous antique maps and globes. However, it’s important to look for signs indicating when they were made. If Istanbul still says Constantinople, it would imply the map was created before 1930 when the Turkish government changed its name.
Thrift stores are also great places to uncover 18th and 19th-century furnishings, vintage clocks, sterling silver, frames, kitchen appliances, colourful glass items, and artwork. Do you love to read? You can usually find old books to display on your coffee table, some of which may be valuable first editions if you’re lucky.
I use books A LOT in my styling at home, either stacked on the coffee table, open on a stand in the kitchen, upright on a bookshelf or a mixture of both over multiple shelves in a bookcase.
Incorporating Antique Decor Into Your Home Design
Once you’ve curated several antique decorative items, you can begin incorporating them throughout each room. However, you must do so carefully to create a cohesive design. Here are six tips for sprucing up your design with antique treasures.
- Mix Old and New
Combining antique items with contemporary designs creates an eclectic aesthetic in your home. For instance, the industrial style has grown more popular over the last 10 years, particularly brass lighting fixtures.
Our home is 1930s, so I’ve loved weaving brass into our kitchen hardware, tap and light fittings as a nod to the era. Combined with oak and rustic wood, soft white walls, collected accessories and sleek modern lines though elements such as furniture and our quartz, we’ve created a modern organic look that is comfortable and stylish yet ‘lived-in’.
These items infuse uniqueness and warmth in modern design. You can also use one or two vintage statement pieces as a focal point and decorate the rest of each space with your usual style preference.
- Create a Gallery Wall
Gallery walls are great ways to display vintage artwork or photography and are ideal for showcasing old maps too, particularly in an office which is where we plan to use ours.
If you choose to display your own photographs of family, friends and places, consider using antique frames from the thrift store for historic charm but keep some form of unity such as using all black and white photographs or similar tone frames.
A staircase wall is one place you might put a gallery wall. They also help create a comfortable atmosphere in a living room or small nook area.
- Repurpose Old Items
An old chest often makes an eye-catching coffee table. A vintage upholstered chair or up cycled cabinet can also bring real personality to a space.
I’ve picked up an old chair which has lovely vintage details and it looks amazing in our lounge with a new check fabric; I love that it’s clearly an individual piece in contrast to our more modern armchair in the other alcove.
Old pieces may require some light rehabilitation to restore them to their former glory. For instance, epoxy putty fills in chipped or missing wood on antique furniture. The putty dries within hours, allowing you to sand and stain it to match the original coat. Additionally, a water-diluted non-chlorine bleach solution can remove stains in old fabric.
- Upgrade Cabinets With Antique Hardware
Sometimes, minor changes make the most significant difference in home decor, such as upgrading furniture or cabinetry with antique pulls and knobs. This is also a way to bring a sense of Old-World charm to modern furnishings.
- Apply Nostalgia-Inspired Wallpaper
While wallpaper isn’t necessarily antique, you can find sheets and rolls with vintage patterns. In fact, Tulio Salcedo — a wall decor buyer at Lulu and Georgia — says heritage prints and grandmillennial design are at an all-time high.
Heritage prints include lace-inspired motifs and florals, much like you’d find in your grandmother’s house. These usually look great in powder rooms or dining rooms.
I’ve personally used a bold William Morris wallpaper in our downstairs cloakroom and it gets more comments than any other room in the house!
- Add a Touch of History With Accents
Regardless of your primary home design tastes, you can infuse a touch of history with timeless treasures and accent pieces. Do you have a collection of family heirlooms? Display these in a bookcase or cabinet. Other ideas include vases, glass bowls, and figurines on a mantel.
Again consider some form of ‘unity’ to create harmony over chaos.
Decorate Your Home With Antique Fashions
With their wonder and history, antiques can help you tell your unique story within your home. Of course, carefully curated items are best for blending vintage decor with your preferred style. Use whatever best reflects who you are, that’s the beauty and fun of it! That way there’ll be no other home like yours and that makes it sooooo special.
