How To Style Your Home With Vintage Furniture
How to style your home with vintage furniture
Adding a piece of vintage or antique furniture to your home adds a sense of history and individuality. However finding authentic vintage furniture in Sydney may be a bit more challenging. We here at Watertiger want to make it a bit easier for you !
Vintage furniture – Style with Vintage – How ?
First of all, if it needs any clarification – Vintage or antique furniture does not necessarily mean ancient furniture. The term ‘vintage’ in interiors usually refers to a piece which is over 20 years old, whereas ‘antique’ is technically 100 years plus.
Now if you’re wondering where to start, we have compiled a simple guide below on how to incorporate vintage, or antique, furniture and artefacts into your home….
- Consider your aesthetic or ‘personal’ style
- Look for quality and authenticity
- Avoid trends or fads, which will outdate quickly
- Mix and match with different pieces or styles or eras
- Mix your vintage with contemporary
- Consider your aesthetic or personal style
When deciding how to style your home, think about your aesthetic, or personal style – look around you, online or in magazines, start a Pinterest board with looks you like and think about style and colour palette. If you want your house to feel like a home, choose unique vintage pieces to complement your style.
Don’t be afraid to mix and match different looks – clean and simple and modern interiors balance perfectly with aged stone pots from Indonesia, or stunning terracotta pieces from Morocco, dark teak pieces from rural India or handmade ceramics from China.
- Look for quality and authenticity
Here at Watertiger we have spent over two decades sourcing and curating unique pieces from around the globe. Most of our furniture is one of a kind, individual, unique and always interesting ! Every piece is old, so don’t expect it to be perfect, but beauty is in the story and the imperfection…
Most vintage pieces are solid wood rather than veneer, therefore designed to last - they have often lasted a hundred years already so expect them to last another hundred !
We at Watertiger can always tell you the origins of your piece, where we sourced it from along with its approximate age or history. We currently have vintage furniture from rural France in stock, antique pots and water jugs from Indonesia and rare antique pickling ceramic jars from China.
(Rare 19th Century pickling jars from China)
- Avoid trends or fads, which will outdate quickly
It is very difficult in today’s trend obsessed culture to actually get away from what is on trend and sometimes even difficult to find your own sense of style, as we are bombarded with images of the latest look or hot ticket item..
However most of these trends are designed to sell sell sell ! i.e. they focus on new items and cash turnover and are designed to be replaced when the next trend comes along.
If you love your piece of vintage furniture the chances are you will still love it in a year or two, or five or even ten years ! We source and carefully curate every single piece of furniture with love, along with our gut instinct that you will love it too….
- Mix and match with different pieces or styles or eras
Don’t be afraid to mix your pieces up, antique next to vintage, China next to India, or Indonesian next to old French ! You do not have to stick with one era or country of origin when styling with vintage. Most Watertiger pieces sit together in one natural colour palette, allowing pieces to harmonise and complement each other.
Trust your judgement, and be brave !
You can mix and match different textures, materials, colours, experiment with combining different pieces next to one another, place an ancient pot from Java on a vintage French dresser…
(Vintage dresser from France with large Indonesian water pot)
- Sydney Showroom
If you are in Sydney we welcome you to come and browse in our showroom and see how it all comes together, otherwise feel free to drop us a line or give us a call and we can send videos or photos of anything you might be interested in…
(Sydney showroom ~ 70 Robey Street, Mascot)
- Mix your vintage with contemporary
If you already have a contemporary modern home you can inject your own style and personality by adding one-off pieces of furniture or artefacts. Consider adding a vintage coffee table from France…
(Vintage coffee table from Indonesia)
.. or even an ancient door from China repurposed as a unique coffee table….
(Coffee table made from an ancient Chinese door)
Our vintage consoles make an entry way in a contemporary house or apartment both super stylish as well as functional. Click link below how to style a console…
(Console styling using vintage elm console from China)
A brand new minimalist kitchen will always benefit from a huge aged terracotta pot on the island filled with greenery or branches…
(Antique terracotta water pot from Java)
Why choose Vintage furniture ?
If you want to be sustainable then a very simple start is to give a piece of vintage furniture a new home - along with a new life and a new story ! Vintage furniture offers something unique and individual that mass produced furniture simply cannot.
- Sustainability
Sustainability is a great reason for more people turning to ‘old’ or vintage or antique furniture. It is more crucial than ever to make every effort to minimise, re-use and re-purpose, to reduce or prevent landfill and to simply give things a second chance.
(Set of vintage copper pots from France)
- History
By spending more than twenty years finding and sourcing vintage furniture and accessories for the home, we at Watertiger are able to help preserve history, whether that be in our teak artefacts from ancient tribes in rural Nagaland, or our stunning vintage copper cookware from France … We’ve been captivated by the talented craftsmanship from hundreds of years of history and we hope you will be too….