roomplanners OCTOBER 2012
vintage style
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architecture, interiors, fashion, color & art 9 ways to add vintage style to your home!
San Francisco’s
painted ladies
read about our
HOME AWARD 2012!
RoomPlanners receives Home Award!
RoomPlanners magazine and blog recently received first runner-up honors from the American Home Furnishing Alliance for ’outstanding reporting’ on home furnishings in 2012.
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Well-cluttered rooms are always at home in a vintage interior! Picture collages, cozy writing desks and English-style sofas covered with toss pillows feel nostalgic, cozy and personal.
All written information herein is copyright ©2011 Room Planners Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means without written permission from Room Planners Incorporated. OCTOBER 2012
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is your style
vintage?
on the cover
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Other 2012 winners included HGTV magazine, the Pittsburg Post Gazette and Veranda magazine.
If you like to breath new life into old things, your personal style may be vintage. This nostalgic decorating style tends to be eclectic, charming and nostalgic...with undertones of Victorian or English Cottage style. Learn more about this charming style with our downloadable vintage style and vintage décor guides.
Learn where vintage style comes from and how to identify it. Discover what’s behind this nostalgic lifestyle approach, and see how it influenced color, fashion, art, music, culture, furniture and interior design over time.
Add the cozy charm and clutter of vintage decor to your home with our RoomCues decorating guide. Like a recipe for your room, it offers guidelines for choosing vintage furnishings, paint colors and materials, as well as room-by-room tips and dozens of photos.
This downloadable style guide will help you recognize and translate vintage preferences into stylish choices for home and lifestyle.
This downloadable decor guide is filled with all the ideas and information you need to create your own vintage style at home.
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vintage
style
We have the Victorians to thank for the ‘vintage’ look; the most charming and whimsical of design styles. Victorian era; that mid– to late-19th century period when Queen Victoria ruled the great British Empire.
A Queen Anne house... a Degas painting… a pair of laced boots or a white picket fence. Is there any design style quite as captivating as vintage style? This sometimes quirky, whimsical or sentimental style is known for its cozy clutter, its appreciation for ornament, its eclectic tendencies and for its fondness for collecting old things. But there’s little about vintage style that’s stodgy… thanks to its roots in an era of creative exuberance. Vintage style is firmly rooted in the
This was also the era of the industrial revolution and the machine age… which may seem ironic or surprising considering how delicate and feminine the Victorian era turned out to be! But along with ways to reproduce any historic look with the right equipment, this machine age also produced a deep nostalgia for the simpler times of the past...and medieval, or Gothic, ideas were particularly popular. (Many of those ideas are at the root of vintage style today.) A variety of Victorian home styles developed; the fanciful Queen Anne style among the favorites. It hit its stride in the 1880s and 1890s, especially in North America, when home builders pro-
duced highly decorative architectural parts that could be transported across the country on a new network of trains. Vintage ideas today can refer to anything ‘retro’, though pre-20th century ideas are the most enduring. Along with antiques and heirlooms, vintage style suggests a free association of historic ideas… creating an eclectic, eccentric— but always charming effect! Vintage style still draws on a fascination with medieval ideas—but includes our impression of the 19th century Victorian lifestyle as well. Laura Ashley. Rachel Ashwell and others have popularized vintage ideas from the Victorian era with tea-stained floral prints and shabby chic® furnishings…. and the ubiquitous cozy clutter found in 19th century English homes feels comforting and familiar. Inspiration for vintage style can come from anywhere today; anywhere, that is, where nostalgia for a ‘lost past’ exists, where imperfect is valued over perfect, and the old is more valued than the new. Read on to find out more about vintage style and vintage décor...
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the
painted ladies of
San Francisco Detail-rich, colorfully-painted Victorian homes—known today as “painted ladies”—are littered across America. But these architectural gems are uniquely connected to the city of San Francisco... thanks to the Gold Rush building boom, plenty of local redwood, and some local artistry. The flurry of home building in San Francisco after the 1849 Gold Rush coincided with the Industrial Revolution—and the influential reign of Britain’s Queen Victoria. Between 1849 and 1915, nearly 50,000 of San Francisco’s new homes were built in Victorian and Edwardian style. Plenty of local redwood allowed for extra architectural embellishment not seen in European styles.
The “painted ladies” term for was first used by Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen in their 1978 book Painted Ladies, San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians. It’s been used ever since to describe colorful Victorian houses all over America.
Most of the large Victorian mansions of Nob Hill were destroyed by the 1906 Earthquake, but modest examples survived in other parts of the city. During the World Wars, many of these vibrant houses were painted battleship gray using surplus Navy paint; others were demolished. But a colorist movement in the 1960s transformed many of the city’s remaining historic Victorian homes into the “painted ladies” we’re so fond of today... following the lead of San Francisco artist Butch Kardum—who brightly painted his own Italianate-style Victorian home in 1963. San Francisco’s most famous "ladies" are six Victorian houses on Steiner Street, known simply as "Postcard Row." They’re regularly seen in tourist promotions, movies and TV shows.
Victoria vs. Anne...clearing up the confusion! Has it ever struck you as strange that the most famous house style from the Victorian era (… the reign of Queen Victoria) is the Queen Anne style? It did us... so we looked into it.
Queen Victoria 1819-1901
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Queen Anne 1665-1714
Anne was the Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the early 1700s. Perhaps due to her support of arts and science, her name was used by British architect Richard Norman Shaw during the Victorian era to label his own artistic style. Home builders in American during the Victorian era may have been
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inspired by the work of Shaw—and similarly labeled their buildings ] Queen Anne. But with their addition of spindles and other architectural details, America's Queen Anne houses grew increasingly elaborate… and quite different from Queen Anne style in England. Ironically, the informal, asymmetrical designs of both British and American Queen Anne styles were nothing like the actual building style during Queen Anne's reign!
vintage Victorian homes
outside!
inside! Of all the vintage house styles, Queen Anne is undoubtedly the most charming… and certainly the most popular.
Romantic and whimsical, this vintage favorite is at its best when its asymmetrical and fanciful. Look for these other common ‘vintage house’ features::
asymmetrical design steeply-pitched, or irregular, roof a prominent chimney double-hung windows bay windows dormer windows decorative details, including turrets, braces, brackets or other ‘gingerbread’ details deep-set or wrap-around porches white railings and picket fences English gardens, rose gardens or climbing ivy flowerboxes
Queen Anne and other Victorian-style homes define vintage style! They also come in all shapes and sizes… from narrow and long to square-ish. Characteristic of a vintage home are an orientation to the outdoors, with covered verandas and window views often influencing the irregular layout or unique character of the layout. Look for these other common ‘vintage interior’ features:
wrap-around porches quirky-shaped spaces nooks & cozy alcoves prominent woodwork and high baseboards a well-appointed entrance hall bay windows and window seats fireplaces… often in every room tall windows doors with oval windows or oval moldings wallpaper-covered walls hardwood floors picture-filled walls
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what makes it
vintagestyle vintage people
People who like vintage style tend to be the most nostalgic of the nine Environmental Personality Profiles. They thrive on the beauty of yesterday and breathe new life into what’s old, unique or imperfect. Like vintage people, vintage colors, fashions, furnishings and art reveal a fondness for history. Vintage objects are collected slowly and carefully over time… and each tells the story of a unique life.
Learn more about vintage style… from it’s impact on architecture, art and color to its continuing influence on fashion and interiors. Vintage Style $9.00 Download now.
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OCTOBER 2012
If you like vintage style, you value personal expression and authenticity more than popular or trendy ideas. the vintage personality You’re motivated by avoiding an ordinary life. You like to do things your own way and dislike anything that’s routine or impersonal. You prefer to live outside the tedious realities of life and often disregard the rules and formulas everyone else lives by. You’re nostalgic about what’s overlooked, ignored or rejected by the modern world. What others cast off as imperfect, useless or ‘yesterday’s news’ is pure treasure to you. You rescue the past or the unwanted in order to make it into something beautiful or personal. You look for deeper meaning in everyday life and everything things. Others view you as sensitive, creative, idealistic and passionate.
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vintage color Vintage colors look like they’ve been around for awhile. Inspired by the muted, mature colors of late summer, these romantic hues feel complex, shadowy, melancholy and beautiful. the vintage palette Dreamy, subtle and quiet, vintage colors suggest a hazy, filtered view of life influenced by the enigmatic hues of lamplight, antique plaster and dried flowers. Their tender, grainy effect recalls the faded hues of ‘period’ rooms that witnessed a more elegant past. We suspect they might have once have been brighter, but now show the tarnished or faded effects of age, weather, sunlight or wear. The vintage palette also reflects the ethereal, shifting effects of light and weather that fascinated impressionist painters. How a vintage color feels is as important as its hue… and no other palette plays with our emotions quite like this one. We experience a full range of reactions around these sentimental hues... from aloof and melancholy to happy and contented.
vintage fashion Vintage fashion recalls medieval fairytales and play up stereotyped views of women and femininity. the vintage wardrobe Though modified today from its stage-coach-and-glass-slipper connotations, vintage fashion today is still charming and old-fashioned and tied to the most romanticized looks from the past. Vintage fashions often integrate dressmaker details, buttons, ribbons, lace eyelets and layered fabrics. Iconic vintage fashions include flared skirts. floral dresses, high collars, leg-wear, laced boots, pointed toe shoes, long gloves, pearls, heart lockets, brooches and chokers (a generous use of jewelry is a hallmark of the look), as well as French braids and chignons. Inspiration for the look can include the simple floral dress with floppy straw hat... the buttoned-up GibsonGirl look… the dramatic evening apparel of the late 19th century Belle Epoque... or the eclectic, individualized mixes of vintage fashion ideas today.
vintage interiors Vintage rooms are intimate, cozy, complex and retrospective. They feel deeply connected with the past.
vintage arts Vintage art tends to be slightly melancholic. It invites the viewer to feel deeply, or to escape to happier thoughts during sadness.
the vintage interior To the lover of vintage style, furniture that’s inherited, unearthed at a flea markets or discovered at an antique stalls is valued for its unique character and old soul... and much more appealing than what’s on sale at the furniture store. Such a romantic style seems to rescue a finer past, even if it has a little dust on it… and not everything matches. A slightly hodgepodge decorating strategy suggests years of heartfelt accumulation and use. Furniture that’s imperfect is prized for its character. Unique items are preferred to matching suites and inherited objects tell a more personal story. Part of the vintage home’s charm comes from its quirky, unpredictable floor plan, aged surfaces and charming mix of personal things. Furnishings feel old or antique, and every piece comes with a story about who it belonged to, how it was acquired or how it was restored. From quirky nooks and crannies to overgrown ivy and worn finishes, vintage homes celebrate not just one lifetime, but many lifetimes of use.
the vintage arts Vintage arts are much more than a pretty picture or a catchy tune. Music in the vintage, or romantic, style is as sensitively colored as a romantic painting… and romantic poetry is always visual. Mood is the most important ingredient of any art, and all the vintage arts work together to create a deep experience. Whether the result of dashed dreams, lost love or the fear of being ordinary, vintage arts widen the gulf between reality and fantasy. When life become too stressful or too ordinary, vintage art provides consolation via a more dashing fictional character, a more melancholic song, a more lyrical poem or a more exotic setting. Whether a love ballade on the radio, a Harlequin romance novel, a 19th century poem or an Impressionist art gallery, vintagestyle arts tend toward the sentimental and the beautiful, stirring the soul and pulling at the heartstrings.
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vintage style
...at home
You don’t need to live in a Queen Anne house to create a vintage style interior. Here are 9 simple ways to get the look!
slipcovers
& SKIRTS
picture COLLAGES
Slip-covered chairs and sofas are romantic and nostalgic… recalling casual summers in the country! Skirted beds and tables, plain or ruffled, are equally suited to vintage rooms.
Vintage rooms showcase collections of
artwork above a sofa, table, stairway or along a hall. Rather than hanging matching frames in a row, vintage rooms mix and match many frame sizes, shapes and art subjects randomly, but closely, together.
ARTFUL Learn more about vintage décor… from furniture and accessory ideas to paint colors to room-by-room decorating tips… and dozens of inspirational photos. Vintage Style $9.00 Download now.
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OCTOBER 2012
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lamps
A vintage lamp is rarely a plain, bland or white-shaded one! Vintage lamps often reveal the hand of a crafty person— whether with handsome stained glass, fringed-wrapped or fabric-covered shades… or with two– or three-tiered bases that resemble old-style candelabras.
RATTAN &
wicker Wicker furniture is ideal for a vintage living room, sunroom, bedroom or dining room. Indoors or out, a wicker chair offers the perfect place to lose yourself in a good book. Natural, white or whitewashed finishes are favorites.
AGED
surfaces
Vintage means old and loved! Faded, crumbling or otherwise worn and agedlooking effects recall finer things and more elegant times. Think dressy fabrics that are tattered or worn, surfaces that simulate peeling paint or stone-y effects with a complex layering of color and texture.
floral
PRINTS
No proper vintage room is complete without a few references to the outdoors, especially flowers! Floral wallpaper is a favorite, along with floral-themed art, fabrics and rugs… or fresh flowers in vases and pitchers. An allover pattern is more nostalgic than an obvious pattern repeat.
ovals
& CURVES
The oval designs and gentle curves of vintage style first inspired Victorian jewelry, including hand-held silver mirrors and cameo pins. Soft romantic shapes are much favored in vintage rooms, seen in shapely cheval mirrors, oval clock or picture frames and floral patterns.
WRITING DESKS &
vanities
A slender writing desk recalls a time when women had the time to ponder life, write in their journals or pen a love letter. With a mirror above, (preferably an oval one!), this versatile piece also makes an ideal dressing table or vanity. Pair with an elegant chair or skirted stool.
old-style
FAUCETS
From claw-foot bathtubs to old Victorian-style faucets… oldfashioned plumbing is a must for vintage baths and kitchens. Choose old porcelainstyle sinks and tubs... and faucets with handheld sprays and crisscrossed handles labeled ‘hot’ and ‘cold’.
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