Incorporating Vintage and Modern Elements in Your Home

When it comes to interior design, everyone has their own personal tastes and preferences, some like the minimalist look, others lean towards a more traditional home, and others embrace the contemporary. However, you don’t have to choose just one design concept, you can merge two together to create something truly unique and tailored to your preference.

One of the most stunning design concept combinations you could introduce is incorporating vintage and modern elements in your home. Modern design is a concept that arose in the early to mid-twentieth century and it is characterised by its minimalism and clean lines, its natural light and neutral materials, as well as its monochromatic colour palette. Vintage décor, on the other hand, pre-dates modern décor by decades. A vintage décor incorporates elements, furniture and accessories from earlier periods in history, for it to be considered vintage it would need to be 40 years old or more.

By combining modern and vintage, the interior design you create will be unique and timeless, it adds nostalgia and sentimental value into the aesthetics, making the space look like it has evolved over time. However, if you don’t carefully plan the integration of design concepts, it can look messy and chaotic.

Why You Should Consider Mixing Vintage and Modern Home Design

By implementing a modern design into your home, and only modern, the design of your home looks one dimensional, it can appear soulless, unimaginative and unoriginal, like a generic room in a catalogue. Implementing a vintage only design, on the other hand, injects a lot of personality, but the room can look outdated and old, like a room you’ve inherited from your grandparents and have never redecorated. Mixing vintage and modern home design injects personality and character into the room, adding a new dimension to it. Vintage pieces look even more extravagant, beautiful and unique next to the modern décor, allowing you to really appreciate their beauty.

Mixing vintage and modern home design is aesthetically pleasing, but it is also more functional. By limiting yourself to one home design you limit yourself to the standard functions within that design. Modern designs are sleek and sophisticated and technologically advanced, but they lack the personality, homeliness and comfortableness that vintage designs offer. When you combine two designs, you can take the elements you most like from each of the designs.

Choosing Your Vintage Pieces

Vintage items make wonderful focal points, they add the wow factor, draw the eye and are visually much more extraordinary. But how do you choose the right vintage items to have as a focal point? When it comes to main rooms, the fireplace is typically the focal point of the room, regardless of what design concept you adopt. Installing a vintage fireplace is a fantastic way to add a unique and stunning focal point into your room that really adds the wow factor and an abundance of character. Other vintage items that could work well as a focal point include unique lighting fixtures, antique mirrors, and vintage rugs. When choosing the vintage pieces think about:

Creating a cosy and inviting space can be achieved through vintage items like accent pillows and throw blankets made from soft textures such as fur, or velvet.
Collections are another visually stunning way of combining the vintage with the modern interior design when they are grouped together in a display, such as a glass cabinet, or on shelves.
Balance harmony between modern and vintage, for example, a modern sofa works beautifully with a vintage rug.
The vintage items you buy not only need to work well with a modern design, they also need to work well together. Make sure the vintage items don’t clash with one another, or the room will look messy as a result.
Make sure the vintage items you buy inject your personality and design preferences into the room, don’t just try to combine the designs, try to create your own design that you can enjoy for years to come.

Modern Elements to Consider

The modern elements you put into your home will help to compliment the vintage items perfectly, but only if you strike the right balance. When it comes to mixing vintage and modern home design, you’ll most likely need more modern elements than you will do vintage. This will help to create the well-rounded duality appearance.

One of the easiest ways to create a modern design in your room is by installing a modern fireplace to act a focal point, with vintage décor added into the interior to create a design with more dimensions. The fireplace is often the focal point of any room, the eyes are drawn to the fireplace, so if this is modern, then the room will feel like it has a good balance between modern and vintage. Another thing to consider is the colour scheme, a modern colour scheme will work much better than any other colour scheme or interior design when it comes to a vintage-modern combination.

Balancing the Two Styles

When it comes to blending two interior design concepts it is a fine line between a harmonious blend, and messy mis-match of items. To steer away from the chaotic look and create a seamless design, you need to use the modern elements of the design to both help blend the two concepts together and to compliment vintage pieces.

Injecting lots of vintage items in a room, of different colours and styles, can create an overall jaunting and disjointed look. A modern (common) colour scheme can help to break down the messy appearance and join the vintage pieces together.
Buy things like modern sofas, then add vintage textiles like throws and pillows, alongside rugs and carpet runners.
Create a modern and contemporary space, then add a vintage item into the collection to add the wow factor. For example, a modern looking kitchen with an antique cabinet looks full of personality and blends modern and vintage perfectly.
Use big antiques in small modern spaces to help strike this stunning balance and a sense of grandeur.
Apply an 80-20 rule, where 80% of the décor is modern and the remaining 20% is vintage. Doing it this way will ensure that designs work well together, instead of starting to fight one another.

Room-by-Room Tips

The way you combine vintage and modern interior design will vary somewhat between rooms, although one thing will remain unchanged, you should keep a good balance between the two styles. In all rooms the colour scheme you choose will have a big impact. You should also always try to keep to the 80-20 rule mentioned above to avoid the vintage elements becoming too overpowering and jaunting. Here are some tips to combining vintage and modern interior design in each of your rooms:

Living room: combine a modern sofa with a vintage chair, or a footstool, throws and pillows. Decorate a modern fireplace with a vintage candlesticks on the mantlepiece. Install a vintage fireplace against a modern wall.
Kitchen: modern kitchen furniture with a vintage kitchen cabinet, or modern kitchen appliances with vintage tubs and canisters.
Bathroom: vintage mirrors and fixtures against a modern looking bathroom in a modern colour.
Bedroom: modern colour schemes and bedroom furniture with a vintage dressing table, or bedspread.

Common Mistakes to Avoid Combining Vintage and Modern Interior Design

When combining vintage and modern interior design there are some common mistakes you should avoid making:

Overdoing the vintage interior design is a common mistake people make. Too much vintage can look crowded, messy and disjointed, as well as looking too old and outdated. You always need to try to stick to the 80-20 rule.
Colour schemes that aren’t modern won’t work in bringing the interior designs together in a good balance. You need to implement the main colour scheme before you do anything else.
Being too afraid to be bold, buy beautiful and unique feature and accent pieces to add into your home and blend these into the interior design. If you don’t, your home will just have a modern design and the balance will be completely off.

Most people would think that modern and vintage cannot work well together, that the two designs are so very opposed that they will only clash. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you balance the two designs out, if you plan the interior design properly, then the two different style concepts can compliment each other to create a visually stunning design concept. By using the tips provided in this blog, you can design a completely unique and timeless home that reflects your personality and you can enjoy for years to come. Now you have these tips, experiment with your own design concept by mixing vintage and modern elements into your own home.

We stock a diverse range of modern and vintage fireplaces that are sure to add the wow factor and compliment your modern-vintage interior design perfectly. For help creating this aesthetically stunning design, call one of our friendly team members.