How to achieve Victorian style decorating?

Victorian era was the era of abundance and beauty. Learn how that you can acieve to victorian style when decorating your home.

Before we start our discussion about how to create Victorian style, it is important to know what is Victorian style.

Victorian era was the era of abundance. Due to industrial advancement, mass production became possible. Railway transportation made it easier to carry goods from one place to another. This led to the mass circulation of affordable things. For the first time, middle class people could afford to stay tuned with the currently prevalent interior decorating style.

Thus Victorian style was the style of the masses.

If you want to achieve Victorian style, the most important thing to remember is to have many decorative things. For some the effect may look crowded or even cluttered to some extent but pleasing combination of many things like, wood paneling, floral wallpapers, stained glass, pottery tiles, and parquet and marble flooring is the key feature of Victorian style.

These are the few tips for achieving Victorian style at less cost.

1) Victorians always admired Renaissance things and tried to reproduce all types of hardware. This reproduced metal hardware is easily available in the market. Use doorknobs, drawer pulls etc. in this style.

2) Fireplaces were plain and polished with carved brackets. Use simple motifs to decorate the corners of the mantel. White marble fireplaces would be ideal but with the paint techniques even wooden fireplaces can give an illusion of marble.

3) Decorative moldings and ornamental plasterwork was the key feature of this style. However, since this is very expensive, the similar effect can be achieved with the use of decorative cornices at the end of the arches. With paint techniques wooden cornices can be given quite an expensive look.

4) Stain glass is an integral part of the Victorian style. It is very expensive to have stained glass windows or doors that are custom-made. So stain them with the permanent stain glass colors. If you want more flexibility then make designs on the separate piece of glass and just attach it to the window or door.

5) The preferred color-scheme during this time was dark shades. Dark and rich colors were used for all the important rooms. However, not much attention was given to gloominess these colors produced. For better illumination, keep only one or two walls in dark colors and paint rest of the room in lighter shades.

6) Since machine made wallpapers became popular; they were used in abundance. Fruit, floral-designed wallpapers and tapestry papers can be used to achieve this effect. If you are good at stenciling, then consider stenciling one of the original designs during that period.

7) All the woodwork, like the walls, was grained in dark colors. This effect is very easy to achieve. Just paint the woodwork with dark polish or stain it in darker shades. There are numerous shades available in the market.

8) The Victorian furniture is heavily upholstered. Seasonal variations can be achieved by slip covering the furniture.

9) Use fabric everywhere, for upholstery, curtains, valences, window treatment. You can also use the fabric as a wall covering in the place of wallpaper. Use the starch to paste the fabric to the wall. It makes it easy to replace when it becomes dull and old. Just wet the wall and the fabric comes out. Then you can wipe the wall clean.

10) To achieve quick and temporary Victorian look, decorate dining table with lots of fruits and flowers and candles. Cover the furniture with rug, throw or oriental shawls.