Victorian Homes Decor - Styles of Interior Decorating to Make Your Home a Showplace

Victorian homes are extravagant. Victorian homes decor is lavish. Victorian styles of interior decorating are highly customizable depending on the house. The first things to consider are your floors and walls.

Floors and Walls

Most Victorian homes have hardwood floors. Styles vary from luxurious to almost rustic depending on the house’s time period. Hardwood floors are part of Victorian homes decor. Oriental carpets are traditionally used in Victorian styles of interior decorating. Use a subdued carpet for a plainer floor and go all out with an extravagant carpet for an intricate hardwood floor. Red is probably the most popular color for Victorian parlors, dining rooms, libraries and other formal rooms. It’s used in carpets and wallpaper. A burgundy Oriental carpet with gold as the major secondary color is ideal for a room with a dark wood floor and trim. If your Victorian is simpler in style and features wainscoting or a chair-rail wall, keep wall and carpet colors lighter. The most ornate of Victorian homes often have white walls, so carpets with colors like white, blue and gold are in keeping with the formal style of the home.

Furnishings

Styles of interior decorating for Victorian homes require lots of furniture and the more intricately carved and upholstered the better. A familiar item in the Victorian home is the sofa with its luxurious upholstery and spindly legs. Sofas and wing chairs are often off-white. Other popular colors are red, gold and green. Upholstery may be satin, velvet or brocade. People in the Victorian era were fond of “fainting couches.” Fainting couches have the same embroidery and elaborate woodwork but aren’t full sofas. Loveseats were also popular in the Victorian parlor. Lots of seating required an equal amount of tables. No Victorian parlor or bedroom is complete without end tables holding lamps with tasseled silk shades or handsomely painted hurricane lamps. An authentic touch of Victorian homes decor for the bedroom is a candle holder with a handle. There is no one particular style of Victorian bed. Some are four-posters, some have canopies, some have handsome dark wood headboards and footboards and some are painted white.

Lighting

In addition to lamps and candles, the chandelier with dangling lead crystals is a must for the more elaborate Victorian home. Some Victorians homes were fitted for gaslight and still have wall sconces that you may be able to have converted to electricity. If at all possible, preserve the original decor even if it’s not functional.

Frippery

A Victorian lamp table requires a doily. So does a bedside table, and a buffet, and a vanity table. Consignment stores and estate sales are great places to find doilies and vanity sets for Victorian homes decor. Every wing chair needs an antimacassar to look authentically Victorian. It’s not possible to have too much Victorian homes decor. Velvet window treatments, china figurines and paintings of hunting dogs were favorites of Victorian homeowners.

With accurate Victorian styles of interior decorating, walking through your door can feel like stepping back in time. A proper Victorian home should have something to please the eye anywhere you look, from the stained glass in your front door to the gilt mirror frame above your fireplace. If you're starting with an empty Victorian, you’re lucky because you have the opportunity to turn it into a showplace.
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