5 Tips & Ideas for Decorating a Vintage-style Room

Popular for being charmingly old-fashioned, individualistic, quirky, and casual at the same time, a vintage-style room is a treat to behold.

Depending on your preferences and sense of taste for decor, a vintage-style room can actually shift in vibe — from nostalgic to romantic. It also helps that this particular style is known for being versatile and budget-friendly. That is the simple beauty of going vintage.

Vintage styles are far-reaching, and it’s the perfect opportunity to show off your creative side. It’s not easy to pick one word to describe the beauty of vintage, but in general, vintage style entails decorating with fabrics, accessories, furnishing, and colors that were popular in the past decades. Think items that are more than 20 years old, but less than a hundred. In particular, during the era of the 1940s and the 1950s.

How to Create and Decorate Your Own Vintage-style Room

Vintage items are highly-associated with nostalgia, but they’re not quite antique just yet. If you want to design and create your own vintage-style room, then check out these 5 tips and ideas from Panel Wall Art to help you get started on the right path.

#1 Find authentic vintage items

Authentic vintage finds aren’t going to be in your local mall or the big-box furniture store. When you’re looking for items for your vintage-style room, think of looking for vintage like it’s a hunt. You need affordable furnishings that are and have been well-loved for decades.

Image Credit: Pinterest

Your best bet of places to look are flea markets, thrift stores, antique shops, garage sales, and malls that sell secondhand items. When you’re online, a decent place to look for vintage furniture can be Craigslist.

Sometimes, you don’t have to look so far, and you can find vintage items in the basement or the attic.

#2 Mix old and new furnishings

Image Credit: Real Homes

Decorating a vintage-style room doesn’t mean that everything in the room has to be old. In fact, a room full of classic things can get a bit overwhelming. Instead of focusing too much on period pieces, mix your vintage accessories or furniture with brand new items. 

#3 Get creative with vintage furniture

Vintage-style rooms are one of a kind, and so are you. So when you’re decorating your room, it only makes sense to get creative. This isn’t the style fit for matching furniture, predictable decor, or following the rules. 

Image Credit: Decoholic

Do all kinds of quirky things and experiment with your vintage finds. Use folding chairs as bedside tables, set a mirror on the floor, adorn the walls with swanky-looking wall art. Do something very different. The best part is that you won’t make horrible mistakes, because you set the standard and it’s all up to you.

#4 Colors and patterns in vintage decor

There is no such thing as a hard-and-fast vintage colors scheme. In general, you’ll find that the vintage palette is soft, and makes use of a lot of creamy white. 

Image Credit: Essential Home

You can get colorful with moss green, mint green, soft blue, pink, pale lavender, or even buttery yellow. A vintage-style room is not for dark colors, intense bright colors, too much brown or beige, or even earth tones.

Mix up your patterns when doing a vintage-style room. Try out floral patterns or other botanicals, or even birds and butterflies. Scenes of idyllic 1940s or 1950s life is also good.

#5 Wall art perfect for a vintage-style room

No room is complete if you have large empty wall spaces, even a vintage-style room. It’s always a good idea to invest in wall art pieces that brighten up a space and tie the look of an entire room all together.

The safest go-to route is customized canvas prints, where you can hang up black-and-white or grayscale renderings of your favorite pictures.

A good theme to focus on are landscapes, like our bridge canvas art collection.