Let’s start this post with a simple statement: home decorating can be exhausting. If you want your home to resemble anything that could be considered a unified style, you have to put some effort into it. Otherwise, you end up with a mishmash of things that lack any sort of cohesion. With that said, do you have the stamina to keep up with vintage decorating styles?
Take farmhouse vintage and modern farmhouse. The two similar styles are designed to be more than just a nod to the late 1890s farmhouse look. If you’re going all-in, your goal is to make your house look as much like a 19th-century farmhouse as possible. Quite frankly, it is even more exhausting than just trying to make sure all your decorating choices match.
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Making Things Look Old
So here’s the thing about farmhouse vintage: all the things in your home might not be genuinely old. And even things that are older may not be old enough to qualify as genuine late 19th century antiques. So how do you still achieve the farmhouse vintage look? By making things look older than they really are.
Jami Ray Vintage is a Utah company that specializes in this sort of thing. Jami Ray and her husband are experts at taking old stuff they find at thrift stores and auctions and making it look even older. Sometimes they take new stuff and make it look old, too.
A typical project they might take on would involve obtaining a wooden kitchen table from the 60s or 70s and making it look like it came out of a 19th-century farmhouse. They might distress it a little bit before painting it with chalk paint. Then they might find several mismatched chairs and an old bench and give them the same treatment. Put it all together and you have a dining room set that truly looks like it belongs in an 1890s farmhouse.
It’s A Lot of Work
Staying true to the farmhouse vintage design style takes a lot of work. Not only are you looking for old things and trying to make newer things look old, but you are also putting a lot of effort into the details of each decorative element. And it’s not just the furniture. From cabinets and shelves to lamps and living room knickknacks, everything has to be consistent with the look. Even linens and wall coverings must be up to snuff.
Of course, everything this post has talked about thus far relates to farmhouse vintage. But what if you were into something else? What if your idea of decorating good time is the postwar 50s? Applying the same mindset would be equally exhausting. In fact, it might be even more exhausting for the simple fact that it’s harder to find pieces that look like they belong in that era.
Not for the Faint of Heart
The bottom line is that decorating with a vintage mindset is not for the faint of heart. You have to be in it for the long haul. You must be willing to go out of your way to look for pieces that fit. When you cannot find those pieces, you have to learn how to take newer pieces and make them look older. It is a never-ending process to keep your vintage theme from being overrun by modern.
If you have the stamina, good for you. If not, it may be all you can do to ensure your house doesn’t become a mishmash of design styles and decorating themes.