How to Style Your Modern Home With Antiques
One of the most original ways to create a sense of history in your modern home is decorating with antiques. Additionally, you can use antiques to bring varying textures, shapes, and styles to your home too.
Decorating with antiques as accent pieces can add contrast, depth, freshness, and uniqueness in your home. Unique decor elements can add pops of your personality to your home as well.
Your Modern Home Decorated With Antiques
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To begin with, let’s talk about some concepts for decorating your modern home with antiques. Adding antiques to your home in the form of accent pieces is a great way to make your home more interesting.
More so, incorporating both vintage and antiques into your decor often means parsing these pieces together in your home. Yes, these pieces feature decor elements centuries apart but will add a unique and personal touch to your home.
As for styling your home with antiques becomes increasingly popular, designers suggest that randomly throwing old items around risks making your home look outdated or kitsch.
In this article, we will look at some exciting decor options for you to ponder when decorating your home. Antiques pieces create interesting elements and create a style reflecting originality and a beautiful atmosphere.
1 – Restoring Old Furniture
When it comes to home decor pieces, restoring old furniture is my personal favorite. Fortunately, I inherited a few pieces worth restoring. Restoring furniture is great fun and done carefully, result in stunning antiques for your home.
For example, antiques create unique pieces and transform them into high-quality decor with a flawless and eye-catching design. Often, you can locate antique furniture at discounted prices too. Yard sales are a great place to discover antiques as well. Don’t let a great piece pass you buy when you spot an eye-catching item up for grabs.
If refinishing furniture doesn’t suit you, you can leave them in raw form. Let’s face it, many folks don’t like painted furniture, especially antiques. Plus, the beauty and charm of antiques often lie in their original battered form.
Furthermore, no modern-style furniture can match the timeless quality or replace the beauty of antiques. This is especially true if the items come from your family for generations and echo tradition.
2 – Recreate A Period In Time
Recreating an epoch, like renaissance, baroque, romantic, or mid-century, is an exciting and visually stimulating experience. This means decorating your modern home with antique accents from a specific period.
Our favorite idea is adding a tapestry recreating famous historical battle or event. As an inspiration, take a look at the Bayeux Tapestry. It features 224 feet long and regarded as a masterpiece of early medieval wall tapestries.
Using an older style tapestry can help you create a beautiful centerpiece or focal point in the living or dining room. Depending on the elements in the area, it can also help you enhance the decor you already have.
Importantly, a tapestry is not just a design on the wall. It also displays what you love, what you are passionate about, and can give your living area a unique and personalized look.
If you prefer the Victorian period, for example, add furniture that has ornate wooden carved embellishments with rich fabrics. Choose pieces of furniture with exposed wood in some parts like on the armrest, legs, and along the upper back of the chair.
If you want to maintain the modern feeling of the room, add only antique accents. Victorian-style lamp or Victorian-style seating piece covered in brocade, velvet, and embroidered. The list of ideas is long, so feel free to browse old decorating magazines or decorating books to get the inspiration you need to recreate an era.
3 – Group Objects Together
Another great way to mix modern with antique is by putting together extraordinary collections. You can group like objects like Antique Style Mirrors or old paintings on a wall. Faux Ancient Pottery pieces on a shelf or chest of drawers looks stunning as well. If you want it more playful, diversify the size and shape of objects in your collection.
Also, you can make collections by grouping objects by color. These types of arrangements can help you create uniformity or create “focused” chaos. A different idea with the same goal is, for example, framing antique postcards or your grandmother cooking recipes.
And here again, the sky is the limit. You can choose to frame different objects that have sentimental meaning and create a beautiful personalized collection. More so, by grouping objects together, you get an excellent possibility to make an authentic impact on the room decor.
4 – Keep Antiques Open For Display
If you have inherited or invested in a valuable antique item/s, it is quite understandable that you want to protect it. However, keep in mind that this is your home, not a museum.
Above all you want your modern home to feel warm and rooted yet keep the antiques close by and open. Of course, always take extra care with your cherished pieces. Moreover, don’t be afraid to display antique art pieces like a vintage decorative bowl or vase on a drawer or coffee table.
5 – Use Surprising Color Combinations
Mixing modern and antique furniture styles are all about contrasts. That said, do not be afraid to be bold with your color palette as well. While it is still best to stick to a defined color scheme in your decor, you can choose two vibrant shades for dominance.
For instance, you can try color combinations like a jungle green and slate blue. If that is too bold for your taste, go for a single dominant hue to riff on with multiple tones. When decorating with antiques, try not to fear strong color pallets. You can feature them as pops of brilliance throughout your modern home. Using pastels with older pieces pairs perfectly together as well.
6 – Buy Items You Truly Love But Pay Attention to Balance
Look for unique antique objects and furniture that you truly love. Especially when family or historical significance comes into play. In doing so, you cannot really make a mistake.
Keep in mind that creating a designed home that appears as though it has evolved over time requires the right items. Importantly, when mixing and matching antique items with your modern furniture, pay attention to the balance and proportion of the blended styles.
Remember the golden custom of interior design that applies to style, color, shape, and texture – “Keep balance and proportion.”
7 – When In Doubt, Employ the 80/20 Decorating Rule For Your Antiques
Unless you are a passionate antique collector, when mixing modern and old furniture, apply the 80/20 rule. It is simple as long as 80 percent of your interior is unified by the same style.
Meaning, you can then deviate with the other 20 percent and choose another period, or philosophy in your decor. In other words, a fine antique can definitely work beautifully in an ultramodern space.
Keep in mind that the remaining 20 percent of antique accents do not need to be large pieces of furniture. You can also include smaller details such as framed vintage maps, old potteries, or your inherited grandfathers’ clock.
Plus, don’t forget to read How To Perk Up Your Spring Decor With A Colorful Side Table too!
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