How To Furnish using Vintage Furniture

Okay, honestly, over this past year or so, I’ve become OBSESSED with vintage things. I’m talking vintage furniture and vintage clothing. But this is my interior design blog, so we’ll talk about vintage furniture today. Vintage furniture is so amazing because of the quality. In today’s day and age is a little more difficult to find furniture that matches that same quality, even if you pay top dollar. Read The Dirty Truth About High-End Furniture Stores.

Adding vintage furniture pieces into your space can make your home more timeless and certainly give your space more character. Read How To Create A Timeless Interior That Never Goes Out Of Style.

But won’t vintage furniture make my home look dated?

I think many are hesitant to incorporate vintage pieces into their space because of the fear/belief that vintage furniture pieces will make their space look dated. That’s simply not the case. When you incorporate vintage furniture pieces correctly, the pieces will add so much charm, character, and coziness to your space. It’s all about how your furniture pieces complement one another in the space. The space needs to have a good mix and balance of vintage furniture pieces and modern furniture pieces.

You will have to determine how vintage-infused you want your space to be. Maybe you want to feel like you’re in a 90s Jazz Club when you walk into your living room (I know I do) or maybe you just want to incorporate a few funky vintage furniture pieces. Determine your goals in the space, and get attuned to your home decor style before moving forward. Read What Is My Home Decor Style?

Where to find vintage furniture

You may want to add vintage furniture to your home but have no idea where to look. Finding vintage furniture is like going on a bit of a treasure hunt. I find it pretty fun.

I recommend venturing for vintage pieces and letting yourself fall in love with a vintage furniture piece or two (I know, corny). But you may find a chair, an art piece, or even just a pillow that you realllllyy love and want to add to your home.

Here are my recommendations for places to shop for vintage furniture:

• eBay, you can find all sorts of things on eBay, and for online shopping lovers, this makes it a heck of a lot easier to find the perfect vintage piece
• Local vintage furniture stores, I live in downtown Toronto so I have a pretty good variety of local shops around me with unique vintage furniture finds, if you also live in a major city it might be the same case for you
• Thrift stores, of course, you can check out your local thrift store to see what kind of treasures you find there 
• Facebook Marketplace, we are all familiar with the Facebook Marketplace by now, its really hit or miss but always worth checking out 
• Etsy, I find a lot of amazing vintage goods on Etsy, it might be my favourite place to shop for vintage items 
• Your grandparent’s house, you may find some cool pieces at your grandparents or even your parents’ house. So next time your mother offers you her old china cabinet, don’t be soo quick to turn it down!
• Yard sales/estate sales, I have actually never been to an estate sale but I would LOVE to! I see that people have a lot of luck in finding rare vintage goodies at yard and estate sales 

Steps and tips to furnish and decorate with vintage furniture

You may be in a position where either…

1. You already have vintage pieces and want to update your space while still using these pieces
2. You do not have any furniture and are looking to furnish/decorate your space with some vintage furniture

If you are in position No.1, Read How To Create A Timeless Interior That Never Goes Out Of Style. To give you advice on how to update your space while incorporating your vintage pieces.

If you are in position No.2, keep reading.

Let me walk you through an interior design project of mine and my thought processes behind bringing in vintage pieces. 

Let’s look at this space I decorated and furnished for my client.

As you can see, there’s a mix of modern and vintage furniture here. I would describe the style as Grandmillennial Chic.

The chairs, sofa, lamp, and drapery are vintage. The rest of the furniture is relatively modern. The space is put together and it works. 

The 2 simple steps in this decoration process…

1. Determine which vintage pieces are going to be in the space

My client and I determined the seating and a few other pieces would bring in the vintage element. We came to this decision after I convinced her that the chairs were super cool and in great condition. So, that was the jumping-off point to this design. Every design needs a jumping-off point as I like to call it. It basically means an element that I draw inspiration and direction from.

2. Piece together the space with the remaining needed modern furniture pieces 

Once we figured out that we were using these particular vintage pieces we had to find all the other modern pieces that would complement the vintage furniture. Now, this process and determination will depend on your personal home decor style. Interior design is an art form with many different art types. There are really so many ways you can dress an interior. So, there’s no EXACT formula to this.

If your space is already furnished with modern pieces…

If you already have a space that is fully furnished and you want to swap out some of your more modern pieces for vintage pieces, it’s a similar process of first determining what will stay. Once you decide what will stay then you can decide what pieces of furniture can be swapped or added to the space that complement your already existing furniture pieces.

And if you’re like “How the h*ll am I supposed to know what furniture pieces complement one another designer lady?!”

Well, I can help you with that. Just contact me.