5 Easy Tips on How to Decorate with Antiques
With spring cleaning and garage sale season upon us, it’s time to start sprucing up your home. A lot of people struggle to find the best ways to decorate their home, specifically when it comes to antiques. Whether purchased or passed down through generations, figuring out what to do with beautiful vintage items once you get them is a challenge. The good news is, we’re here to help—here are a few different tips on how to decorate with antiques.
Decorating with Antiques
Concentrate Collections
Rather than having a bunch of antiques strewn around the home, concentrate your collections to specific areas. This will draw attention to one special area rather than seeming like a chaotic assemblage all over the home. Think about it as a specific, small, museum exhibit within your home. Gather similar antiques and showcase them all together. They’re sure to be a good conversation starter as well, especially when you have more than one beautiful item on display.
Group by Color
While concentrating collections is one of the best ways to organize and decorate with your antiques, you can further your home’s artistry when you group them by color. Grouping in this manner helps you curate your home based on your color palette, rather than on geography and time period.
Mix the Times
The varied collections you have in your home don’t all need to be antiques; in fact, they shouldn’t be. Mixing pieces from different time periods will actually bring more character into your home and demonstrate a wonderful design evolution. For example, consider pairing an old painting with an ultra-modern creation. This mixture will keep your home from feeling like a stuffy museum and more like a contemporary fusion of time and culture. Learn how to identify chinese porcelain marks to add a touch of culture to your home. Plus, it can be a fun game to try and guess the origins of different antiques.
Accentuate the Floor
One of the most effortless and stunning ways to bring vintage items into your home is with a beautiful antique rug. The history of Oriental rugs makes a wonderful conversation starter; they’re more intricate than their machine-made counterparts. People won’t be able to help but comment on how exquisite the artistry is. Complement the dynamic nature of the rugs with something simple and colorful on the walls—make the focal point of the room the rug.
Add Your Personality
It’s your home, so you should decorate it in a way that makes you happy. Have the focus of each room be on the items that bring you the most joy. If you are excited about a vase passed down through your family, manipulate other aspects of the room to highlight that specific piece. Additionally, you don’t have to showcase items in your home if you don’t like them. At the end of the day, it is your household—decorate in a way that brings you joy, peace, and clarity.
