Decorating an older property requires some tact and some taste. Modern decor often looks out of place in a traditional home and without some period-correct touches here and there, your interior does not suit your architecture.
You can still have a contemporary space, but you have to get these key features right to maintain your property’s rightful appearance.
Skirting Boards And Mouldings
These two often overlooked features do a lot to help define your living spaces. Skirting boards may seem like an insignificant detail in a room, but in a traditional style home, the design of these will impact a room’s appearance and set its era. The same goes for mouldings on the ceiling and around overhead light fixtures. 1920’s era homes typically have Art Deco style mouldings on ceilings and in hallways, for example.
If these have been previously stripped from the home, or are in a poor state, they can be replaced by reproduction mouldings and traditional skirting boards to restore a room’s original appearance. Check out Period Mouldings for a huge range of skirting boards and moulding to suit any decor that will help you bring your living spaces back to their best.
Traditional Patterned Wallpapers
This is an area where you can strike a balance between a modern look and traditional styling. Wall coverings can be more contemporary and your decor can give a nod to the home’s original style through design touches like the mouldings and skirtings. Depending on how deep you want to go into restoring the original look of the house you can add some period correct wallpaper designs.
These will accentuate the traditional look, and if used sparingly such as on a feature wall using a chimney breast or in a short hallway they are not overpowering. Unless you are preparing an authentic tribute to your home’s original ear, decorating a home top to bottom in old school wallpaper patterns. Wallpaper goes back to the Tudor period so you should be able to find patterns from the past no matter how old your home is.
Wood Floors And Rugs
Carpets are a daily modern feature for homes. Their popularity grew through the 20th Century, and up until the post-war era many families could not afford to carpet their whole home or even a single room. Wooden floors and rugs are a much more traditional look for most homes built before the 1950s, with rugs usually found underneath the furniture to prevent them from marking the floor.
The quality of your floorboard will dictate whether you have this option. They can be repaired and refinished but it is an expensive, time consuming, and disruptive job. You may want to consider a high-quality and professionally installed laminate floor that looks similar to traditional wooden floorboards. Rugs should use the colour palette already established in the room, and you should choose traditional patterned rugs that complement your feature wall or wallpaper if you have them.
Add Era-Correct Artworks
To bring everything together you need to add some framed pictures to the wall. These can help bring the traditional look to plain painted walls in contemporary colours. Art is a subtle way to add the styles of your home’s era. Hanging pictures is a cost effective method of bringing in some traditional style that won’t become overwhelming if you spend some time sitting in a room.
Charity shops are the perfect hunting ground for old school art in frames, ready to hang. If you see a frame you like, but the picture is not your cup of tea, it should be cheap enough to buy and replace the art with something else. Search around online and you should be able to find some reproductions of period correct pieces that you can put in a vintage frame.
Change The Lighting
This is the final piece of the puzzle. Modern bulbs and light fixings can look out of place in a period correct home but there are plenty of alternatives available. Traditional style lighting is still popular, and you should not have to try too hard to find overhead light fixings and lamps at your local DIY store or online. To finish off the lighting, you need to find the right lightbulbs.
Not all bulbs are made equal. They emit different levels and hues of light can that have a big impact on how you see your home in the evenings. Amber-hued lightbulbs are perfect for the job in a pre-1950s property. They are low energy LED bulbs that are crafted in a traditional style, so you do not have to compromise on quality or energy consumption. You may want to use these in lamps and have a modern white lightbulb in your overhead fixture to give you options. This simple switch can put the cherry on top of your style.
Get these key features correct and your home’s interior will look fitting for its period of construction even if you want to use contemporary styles on your walls. Traditional looks are cosy, friendly, and great for a family home.
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