Todays interior designers have a eager sense of what elements go into successfully acheiving a Victorian decor.
Clearly the furniture and items in a room go a considerable way in acheiving the look and feel you’re striving for. One of the more well-liked and sought after original antiques to acheive a Victorian look, are the old antique iron beds. Even though many furniture items shout Victorian…….few were produced only during the Victorian Era.
There are a range of elements that go into a well rounded Victorian decor. But there are four basis things that will help insure your success in achieving the look you’re going for.
The first consideration in achieving a rich Victorian setting is “Romanticism”. It should involve nearly every aspect of your design plan. When looking at old vintage photo’s of Victorian rooms, a constant theme always surfaces…….. luxurious fabrics, opulence, sensuously carved furnishings, an abundance of overstuffed pillows with ornately detailed fringe,………….. a cozy warmth. The eye is continuously discovering, in a true Victorian room. Current observers sometimes see the abundance of “stuff”, in Victorian rooms as “clutter”. But in the 1800’s abundance and “clutter” were a sign of prosperity and comfort.
The second item consider with regard to every single element of Victorian design has to be “Color”. In considering suitable colors , there is a term you should learn….. Tertiary. A Tertiary color is one that is made by mixing equal amounts of primary and secondary colors. This leads to rich warm tones that tend to give more importance to walls, material, rugs, window treatments etc. There are no Primary Colors utilised in Victorian decor. It would have been deemed tacky and in poor taste. Surprisigly enough, the rich warm dark tones most homes of the Victorian Period had, had a more deep seeded sensible side to them………At that period in our history the major manner with which to heat a home was coal. No matter what efforts were taken to curtail the “soot” and coal dust from seeping into a homes interiors, it was a constant chore to minimize the effects. Warm rich colors helped “maskdisguise” the effects of the coal. Another issue that was minimized by utilizing warm colors were the stains from oil and gas lamps that supplied most of the light in Victorian homes. Few people know there was a useful side to the beautiful colors employed throughout the Victorian Period.
A third thing to work with for an general Victorian sense, was “Opulence”. The dictionary defines Opulence as ostentatiously rich and luxurious or lavish, a lurid display of wealth. The saying of “more is better” was coined in this period of time. The technique for the middle class, was to accomplish the same look, yet without the same expense. This was done by using less costly materials and by companies that produced the items to manufacture them more in mass than individual hand made items, that the affluent class were drawn to. “Abundance” seemed to be the catch phrase for this school of thought.
The fourth and last thing to think about, which many people ignor, to round out a Victorian setting are your option of“Patterns”. Anything from th wallpaper to the curtains and window treatments to the carpets and bed dressings and to the furniture…….had distinctive patterns. There were no straight Geometric lines to anything. Furniture was carved and “fluted”, iron beds were scrolled and lacy looking with curved patterns. Serious hard angles and straight lines would not turn out to be popular until the Industrial Age ushered in a new more streamlined way to design.
So there you have it………follow these four elements that make up Victorian style and you’ll not only be historically appropriate……..but also Romantically prepared.
I hope you’ve found this blog informative . I invite you to revisit my website
to answer any and all questions you might have about antique iron beds.
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