The Modern Approach to Creating a Victorian Interior

Are you drawn to Victorian interior design? There’s something romantic and timeless about Victorian interiors, with their bold colors, ornate fabrics, and delicately crafted wood furniture. But owning and maintaining a true Victorian home (or any older home for that matter) requires a lot of time and expense—especially if any updates that have been made are primarily aesthetic ones.

Here’s the good news: you don’t actually need to live in a Victorian manor in order to embrace Victorian interior design. Nor do you need to go all out on your spending. There are lots of modern ways to implement Victorian design principles into your own space, including hybrid styles that take the best of the Victorian design era and mix it in with more contemporary features for a more individualized and more up-to-date look.

Below, we’re sharing tips on how to create a Victorian interior, with plenty of modern ideas that anyone can use to bring more Victorian character into their home, regardless of their general style.

What makes a Victorian interior?

Before we get to design tips, let’s talk about what defines Victorian interior design to begin with.

For starters, there are a few things that Victorian design certainly is not, and that’s sleek, minimal, or understated. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be combined with these elements, but it does mean that if you’re into a purely modern look, Victorian interior design probably doesn’t have a place in it.

As for what does define this classic style, here are some of the things that you’ll find in spades in a Victorian-inspired space:

• • Bold colors – Jewel tones, dark wood paneling, and rich metallics are all mainstays of Victorian interior design.
  • Opulence – Walk into any Victorian space and you’re likely to see heavy draperies, plush fabrics, and lots of ornate décor like candelabras, chandeliers, and fine art. It all speaks to the general opulence of this type of design, which in addition to making a space feel more expensive, also imbues it with a lot of warmth.
  • Craftsmanship – You’re usually not going to find a lot of the clean lines that are indicative of Scandinavian or other types of minimalist design. Instead, expect to see craftsmanship at its finest, with carved wood elements, stained glass, and other elements with the clear mark of artisan techniques.
  • Patterns – The devil is in the details in a Victorian home, which is why you’ll usually find a very heavy use of patterns. Like other features within this realm of style, these patterns tend to be ornate and expensive-looking, with plenty of highly saturated colors throughout.
  • Antique furniture and décor – Timeless as this style might be, there is still a certain historical focus to its features. All Victorian homes, even more modern ones, tend to highlight antiques in both the furniture and the accessories used throughout the space, generally of a Gothic and romantic nature.

  When they’re all brought together into one space, the unique elements of Victorian interior design create rooms that are warm, inviting, and inherently luxurious. It’s no wonder that this style has maintained popularity to this day, even if the modern homeowner might not want to (or have the budget to) fully indulge.

  Creating a modern Victorian home

  If you’re looking at the specifics of Victorian design listed above and wondering how you could ever make it work in your own space, we hear you. But there are actually plenty of ways to embrace Victorian interior styling while still maintaining a more broadly modern aesthetic. In fact, it’s totally possible to bring in the warmth and opulence of the Victorian era in bits and pieces rather than an all-or-nothing approach, and the end result can be a space that’s as one of a kind as you want it to be.

  The trick to modernizing a Victorian interior is to strategically pick and choose certain Victorian elements while leaving others behind. The end result should be an interior that’s rooted in this ornamental style without getting lost in it, and that offers a perfect blend of romantic charm and contemporary chic.

  Here are some ways to do it.

  Bring in some drama

  So many Victorian design elements are steeped in the dramatic. And you can achieve this in a more modern way by mixing in a bit of drama with more understated features.

  For example, hang some bold, Victorian-inspired wallpaper in a space with more modern or modern-adjacent features. Or, nix simple window treatments and opt for heavy drapes instead. Other ways to bring in a bit of Victorian dramatic flair include sticking to fine art instead of modern prints (the more ornate the frames, the better) and bringing in plenty of jewel tones and other dark and intense hues.

  Mix and match modern and Victorian furniture

  Victorian furniture is distinct in both quality and appearance, and you’re not going to find a lot of options shopping in contemporary furniture stores. What you can do however is shop antique stores, secondhand shops, and estate and garage sales to pick up Victorian-inspired pieces and then balance them out with other, more modern furniture in your home. You can even modernize the pieces themselves with a coat of paint or by swapping out the hardware.

  To find the perfect blend and celebrate Victorian charm, make sure that any Victorian interior pieces you do bring in serve either as focal points or background items. If you do both, you’ll end up with a room that lacks focus and that seems more thrown together than purposefully designed.

  Work in modern metallics

  Victorian interior design features lots of gold and brass metallics. And although these do continue to have a place in the modern home, you can update your use of metallics even more by going with silver instead and then pairing it with minimalist neutrals like white, gray, or muted blues.

  To keep the pieces themselves true to form, consider buying Victorian antiques and then recoating them with silver spray paint. The structural elements will stay the same but you’ll have an updated piece that fits in more cohesively with a contemporary environment.

  Layer your lighting

  Light is huge in capturing Victorian-era warmth. But whereas modern homes prioritize natural light, Victorian interior design features layered lighting accents, including the use of lamps, sconces, pendants, and chandeliers.

  You obviously don’t want to go too heavy on the amount of light you bring in (and you’re probably somewhat limited by the number of outlets you have anyway), but do try to make sure that every area of a room is properly lit, and that the fixtures you use have plenty of character in and of themselves. You can also use mirrors to duplicate the light in a room, once again utilizing pieces that present with Gothic or other interesting structural designs.

  Bringing a modern approach to Victorian interiors is all about finding the sweet spot between your various types of décor. And this is actually easier to do with Victorian design than you might think, since by its very nature it offers a lot of stylistic variety to choose from. Stick with what speaks to you and what works in your home, and don’t be afraid to edit down a bit if your interior is going too far in one direction. So long as you fill your space with things that you love though, it will be hard to go wrong.