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The 4 Basics of Victorian Interior Design and Home Decor

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An Introduction to Victorian Style Interior Design

This page provides an introduction to Victorian home decor organized into four design basics: Color, Pattern, Opulence and Romance. Learn how to incorporate these principles with ease and confidence to create the room or entire home of your dreams. We've also included some specially selected resources to help you achieve a historically sensitive Victorian style that suits your home's style and yours as well.

Victorian stye is a broad term that generally refers to characteristics of design (architectural, fashion, home decor, etc.) from the latter period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 1837 until her death in 1901.

Victorian design draws its inspiration from nature, geometry, theory, and many other resources. Perhaps the irony of the Victorian era is its reliance on styles of the past while it forged ahead to the future. Thus, the term "Victorian" encompasses a wide range of sub-styles including Eastlake, Aesthetic or Anglo-Japanese, Gothic Revival, Renaissance Revival, Greek Revival (Neo-classical), Egyptian Revival and "exotica" like Turkish and Persian design. Furniture and accessories were elaborate and ranged from delicate to massive.

Photo is a portrait of Queen Victoria in 1843.

Contents at a Glance

The Four Design Basics...
Victorian Home Decorating Fabrics to Ins...
Need Help to Mix Patterns and Colors?
Shop for Authentic Victorian Antiques
Romantic Victorian Style Home Decor Acce...
If you like Victorian Style

Victorian Color Schemes Palette Home Decor

The picture above shows a basic Victorian color palette. However, since computer monitors do not accurately and consistently depict color, the photo should be considered an approximation.

The Four Design Basics of Victorian Home Decor

1. COLOR

The Victorian Home Decorating palette was actually quite sophisticated, with a particular emphasis on tertiary colors. (Tertiary colors are those created by mixing equal amounts of primary and secondary colors. (See Choosing and Using Color in Your Home for more details.) The dark colors that are usually associated with Victorian decor are more the result of poor lighting than of color choice.

Early Victorian homes featured lighter colored walls with richer colors in the dining room and library. Later Victorians turned to deeper tones, which were used to emphasize the importance of a room. In more urban areas, colors like gray, darker green, and a grayer blue were often chosen to minimize the effect of grime from coal dust and stains from gas and oil lamps.

Victorian colors are warm and subdued, and included soft colors on gray or cream backgrounds, deep rich walnut and mahogany browns, black, and shades of teal, plum, aubergine, mustardy yellows and golds, burgundy, rust, blue, green (think sage and olive, not mint and kelly) and "dusty" hues like "ashes of roses" and a subdued shade of lavender.

The colors chosen by individual homeowners also reflected the organic pigments that were available and what their local merchant had in stock. The brighter shades of white we have today, for example, were not available as a paint color in the 1800s and was not seen in any home then or prior to the Victorian era.

Please note that many paint companies, such as Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore, offer "Victorian" paint colors, but they are not necessarily historically accurate. If that is your goal, it is best to not rely on those products alone for information. Whether you decide to choose historically accurate colors or use a combination of old and new hues, consider the limited technologies and pigments as well as the Victorian lifestyle when selecting your Victorian color scheme.

Victorian Home Decorating Fabrics to Inspire Your Color Palette

Choose from a wide variety of period reproduction and vintage fabrics and trims from printed floral chintzes and toiles to silk damasks and velvets. For Historically sensitive home decorating at budget sensitive below-wholesale prices, visit Restoration Fabrics and Trims for Selection, Savings and Service.

2. PATTERN

Victorian use of interior design pattern in parlor home decor

Complex patterns covered every surface of the Victorian home. From multiple wallpapers to luxurious fabrics and oriental rugs, Victorians loved pattern and used it lavishly throughout their home. Although it may look excessive to the modern eye (as it did to some toward the end of the Victorian era), it is nonetheless a very comfortable decorating style, with plush fabrics for layered window treatments and upholstered furniture, elaborately designed rugs, and a warm and welcoming ambience.

Patterns ranged from flora and fauna to geometric patterns, stripes, damasks, and more. Depending on the tastes and talents of the residents, results could range from a mish-mash bordering on horrendous or a skillful, balanced, pleasing environment.

Photo shows a corner of an 1880 Victorian parlor with its plethora of patterns.

Need Help to Mix Patterns and Colors?

This lens provides lots of pictures and examples with easy to follow steps.

victorian room cluttered opulent interior deccor design

Above is a period photo of a Victorian interior. Note the numerous framed pictures on the wall and the decorative objects on every available surface.

3. Opulence

Excessive can often be considered synonymous with Victorian. The upper class flaunted their wealth and those who aspired to their status found ways to mimic it. If one could not afford fine woods to panel walls and marble fireplaces for "public" rooms like the dining room and parlor, less expensive materials would be painted to imitate them. Mass production helped make "the look" available to the middle class via heavy textured wallcoverings like lincrusta and anaglypta and trompe l'oeil ("fool-the-eye") wallpapers.

Elaborate decorations, china, lace, stained glass, flowers, knick-knacks, busts, souvenirs, framed paintings or prints, multi-layered window treatments, richly patterned fabrics, and accessories galore were used liberally throughout the house. Restraint was not part of Victorian interior decorating. The results varied, as one can imagine, from a cluttered and stiffling space to, in the hands of the more skillful, a refined, sophisticated, complex, and warmly romantic room.

The custom of elaborately decorated Christmas trees was popularized in the United States by the Victorians and epitomizes the exhuberant Victorian love of opulence.

Shop for Authentic Victorian Antiques

Add a unique Victorian touch to your home decor with period antique furnishings and decorative accents.

4. Romance

Romanticism is perhaps the strongest reason for the persistant popularity of Victorian decor. Victorian style evokes now, as it did then, the imagery of European fairy tales with its turrets and gargoyles. Lush layers of luxurious fabrics begging to be touched, sensuously carved furnishings, and exotic trimmings added to the seductive appeal belied by Victorian mores and rules of etiquette. Whatever the style, Victorian decor without the romance is simply fussiness and clutter.

Romantic Victorian Style Home Decor Accents

Worthy of the Name

We've personally selected the following items because we thought they represented the some of the best Victorian style new home decor items available today. Much of what is labeled Victorian in today's marketplace is not, by any stretch of the imagination, even remotely related to the Victorian era. We've carefully combed through hundreds of products and chose these because they had the right look and style. Let us know what you think by voting them up or down according to your preference.

The 4 Basics of Victorian Interior Design and Home Decor

An Introduction to Victorian Style Interior Design

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

The Four Design Basics of Victorian Home Decor

1. COLOR

Victorian Home Decorating Fabrics to Inspire Your Color Palette

2. PATTERN

Need Help to Mix Patterns and Colors?

3. Opulence

Shop for Authentic Victorian Antiques

4. Romance

Romantic Victorian Style Home Decor Accents

Worthy of the Name

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Reproduction Victorian Decor

If you like Victorian Style

Check Out These Top 10 Victorian Movies

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