Victorian Interior Design 101: All About the Style That Screams “More Is More”

Victorian inside style and design has tested to have rather the shelf lifetime. Originating in the 19th century, the type that epitomizes opulence stills has lots of faithfuls, perhaps for the reason that it feels marginally a lot more approachable than the glitz of Art Deco. To split down all the ins and outs of Victorian interior design and style, from its origins to modern day Victorian iterations, we referred to as in two professionals. Susie Atkinson, inside designer and founder of Studio Atkinson, has labored with Victorian homes and with Victorian designs a lot of periods through her job. Hannah Cecil Gurney is the director of world advertising and marketing and improvement at de Gournay, the British brand acknowledged for its handmade wall coverings. Read through on for a complete Victorian residence crash training course! 

What is Victorian inside style and design?

Victorian inside style and design is a fashion that originated in the United Kingdom through the Victorian period. Recognized for its abundance of pattern (in wall coverings and in textiles), ornamentation, and use of jewel tones, the interior decoration style absorbs the customer in its abundant environment. The Victorian era made both equally a distinct interior structure model and a distinctive architectural design. 

“My most loved features [of Victorian spaces] are the proportions of the rooms, the top of the ceilings, the scale of the windows, and the architectural detailing, be it ceilings, architraves, or cornices,” Atkinson states. “Internally, tiled floors—either black and white, terra-cotta, or patterns—characterize the entrance, superior-proportion rooms have massive fireplaces. It was a time when floral or patterned wallpapers, heavier curtains, carpets, and rugs had been released. Colours have been usually prosperous and darkish: reds, greens, blues, and browns.”

“My husband and I bought a Victorian residence that experienced been thoroughly remodelled by its prior owner,” Gurney, who grew up surrounded by the imaginative wallpapers of de Gournay, tells Advertisement. “For us, the pleasure was reinstating all the time period details that had been taken out! Victorian is typically unfairly labelled as fussy and ostentatious, i.e. Victoriana, but I discover several of the architectural aspects have their origins in the crisp elegance of the Georgian period.”

Record and origins of Victorian interior design

Financial prosperity in England during the Victorian period—when Queen Victoria was in electricity, that is—is the central factor behind the Victorian inside design and style type. The introduction of mass production all through the industrial revolution in the 19th century led to an influx of funds for the center course and loads of additional very affordable attractive items that would have formerly taken a lot more time (and a great deal a lot more funds) to produce. These mass created decorations had been far from delicate and have left us with a fashion these days that some come across overpowering, but other folks uncover to be a persuasive counterpoint to the minimalist inside design and style of the early aughts.