How to Decorate in a Victorian Style
The Victorian period spanned Queen Victoria's reign, beginning in 1837 and ending with her death in 1901. It was a sentimental age noted for its focus on family, and the average parlor contained many family photographs. Collecting maps and souvenirs while traveling to exotic places was a favorite pastime. Homes were elaborately decorated and featured lace and needlework. Parlors typically included mahogany furniture, velvet draperies, Oriental rugs, needlepoint pillows and knickknacks arranged on etageres. The Victorian influence is still popular today. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Mahogany furniture
- Small side tables
- Needlepoint pillows and pictures
- Ferns and violets
- Lamps and clocks with elaborate designs
- Photographs in silver frames
- Lace doilies and antimacassars
Instructions
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Decorate your home, especially the parlor, with ornate furniture to achieve a Victorian look. Choose a sofa of dark wood with curving lines, wooden scrollwork and deep red or green velvet upholstery, or a love seat with a velvet medallion backrest. Combine it with mahogany side tables with marble tops. Hang heavy velvet draperies in the parlor, tied back with corded tassels. Display knickknacks and collectibles on an etagere, a piece of furniture with open shelves.
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Use old-fashioned lamps with flowered double globes or decorative hanging crystals as parlor accessories. Position long-necked vases or elaborately decorated pitchers on tabletops. Place a clock on a fireplace mantel or a grandfather clock against a parlor wall. Lay lace antimacassars over the backs and arms of sofas and chairs. These accessories were both functional and ornamental in the Victorian home.
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Design your dining room with a mahogany table and chairs beneath a crystal chandelier. Use delicate porcelain dinnerware, sterling silver and crystal goblets when entertaining or hosting family dinners at holidays. Place a silver candelabra with tall candlesticks on the dining table. Serve wine from a cut glass decanter rather than a bottle. Cover your table with a lace or embroidered tablecloth. Hang embroidered and needlepoint scenes, which were common on Victorian dining room walls.
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In your entrance hall, place a hall stand that combines a hat rack, umbrella stand, tall mirror, and table or bench for sitting. Since the piece was practical as well as decorative, the base might hold boots or gloves.
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Hang floral wallpaper in a delicate print to give bedrooms a Victorian air. Place a pitcher and basin on a nightstand for washing one's face in the morning. Choose a bed with a high, elaborate headboard and a multilevel bureau of dark wood with a tall mirror and marble top. Since ceilings, door moldings and woodwork were often elaborate, whether made of dark wood or painted white, select decorative and detailed moldings.
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Set up an arrangement of photographs in your home to capture the Victorian look. Place family portraits in ornate silver or mahogany frames. Display pictures of ancestors, especially portraits such as black-and-white tintypes, printed on tin and often dented, or daguerreotypes, usually in small leather cases with embossed gold frames and occasionally hand-colored faces. Hang some portraits in oval frames suspended by ribbons.
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Display plants on tables and in windows for a Victorian look. Choose ferns and palms, common in Victorian homes, along with rare and exotic orchids. Place African violets, flowers that were introduced to America in the 1890s, about the home.
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Tips & Warnings
Many modern stores sell reproductions of Victorian home accents that you can buy less expensively than the originals.
