Home Decorating Tips for Antique Lovers

Antiques can make wonderful home decorating accents for an apartment, but caution is needed to avoid the cluttered, “garage sale” look. This article will detail two classy ways to use antiques to really set your apartment’s décor apart.

Lighting

Antique stores all have one thing in common: they are heavy on vintage lighting fixtures. If you look carefully, you will usually be able to find something that suits your style perfectly.

For example, I recently found a pair of perfectly preserved four-walled lanterns with hinged glass doors and beautiful antique brass trimmings. Placed on a shelf or end table, these lanterns make perfect accent points for my décor; with a candle in them, they add a shivering old-world charm to a darkened room.

Antique lamps are a great discovery, and can be re-shaded and polished to look like new if need be. Matching sets are always nice, but with a little handicraft work, you can make anything into a matching set.

If you’re the creative sort, you can use some ingenuity to create a lamp that will be uniquely yours. For this project you’ll need a basic lamp kit from a hardware store, at least five vintage hardcover books and a decorative lampshade. By drilling a hole through the center of each hardcover book and threading the center rod of the lamp kit through the hole, you can create a “book light”, or a lamp that looks like a stack of vintage books. Not only is this a useful decoration for your home, but it can be a conversation piece, as well!

Look carefully, and you too can find something that will both light up your apartment and give it some unique old-fashioned charm.

Book Ends

If you are a big reader you probably have a respectable literary collection, which may or may not have a tendency to slide or tip to the side when you remove a book to read. Not only is this inconvenient, but it just looks sloppy.

To add a touch of class and austerity to your bookshelf, as well as keep tipping books in check, consider shopping for some antique bookends. There are the classic bookends in the shape of animals, such as lions or dragons, and not-so-traditional ones in the shape of various religious figures or animals.

Depending on your personal tastes and interests, however, almost anything can become an appropriate bookend. For example, if you enjoy nothing more than a cup of hot tea and a good book on a rainy day, consider purchasing a small antique tea pot as a bookend.

There are two main things to consider when shopping for antique bookends, however. The first is to make sure that each bookend is heavy enough to hold your books upright indefinitely; after all, that’s what a book end is for!

The second is to be careful of how much space the bookend takes up on your bookshelf; you don’t want to lose precious shelf space for something you’re going to set down and never move again.

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Jordan Gaither: I’m a Communications major by trade, an artist by choice, a welder by day and a dancer by night (Okay, I made that last part up). Having lived in a succession of cramped, oddly-shaped apartments, I have a wealth of personal experience in apartment living, as well as arranging and decorating to maximize effect and livable space.