Mixing old and new decor to make your home your own

At a recent Win-E-Mac Community Education event held at Minnesota Rust, in McIntosh, shop owner, Andrea Stordahl talked to the atendees about mixing old and new to create a personal space that appeals to each person individually in their homes.

Here are some ideas to mix old and new in your own home.

Keep antiques together in a certain spot. It’s important that you achieve a harmonious look and don’t turn the interior into a museum. For this reason, it is better to keep the antiques concentrated in a single area as opposed to having them scattered. Plus, by having them in a single location, that area becomes the room’s focal or accent space, or the area you want to draw eyes towards.

Some good spots for antiques include: In a living room corner; Behind a sofa (where you may normally place a coffee or halfmoon table); The fireplace mantel; Where the entertainment center would go (use an antique secretary for your TV, game consoles, etc.).

Group items by color. In museums and exhibits, antique collections are usually grouped according to antique type, geographical region, time period, etc. Since your home is not a museum, you do not have to group according to any of these parameters. With that in mind, though, we do recommend grouping by color. This helps create uniformity; it strains the eye and creates chaos when the room is dominated by non-matching hues.

When it comes to color grouping, you can also take into consideration non-antique décor. In other words, feel free to put that brown antique candle holder on the contemporary brown coffee table you purchased from Pottery Barn.

Mix old and new. Just because you have antique furnishings doesn’t mean you can’t have modern decor style items as well. In fact, it makes sense to include modern items since the home interior is based on modern architecture.  Seemingly incompatible items can complement each other.    If you have a 17th-century floral or portrait painting, for example, feel free to place it next to a work from a contemporary artist. This works well because it shows the evolution of the different types of art.

If you have antiques, don’t be afraid to proudly display them even if you have a 21st-century home. Blending past with present is in fact a creative way to decorate your home and create immense visual appeal.

Use your antique in its functional capacity as it was designed to be used. Sometimes we can be a bit overwhelmed by its age and beauty that we forget antiques still have a practical use. It is hoped that as it has already survived this long with a bit of care and consideration that it will last another 100 or so years.

Buy with your personality in mind. Antiques range from the exquisite to the quirky to the questionable – including their price point! Buy what feels right for you and resonates with your sense of style. You may like to start off with something small like a lamp or vase and gradually as you begin to become more confident you can incorporate larger more statement pieces, like a beautiful French commode.

There is no formula to how a room should look. By adding one or two antique or vintage pieces, you can really transform a space and create a romantic and eclectic fusion of interior design that is visually stimulating and appealing. It also helps the antique item by giving it a new lease of life when mixed with the modern and contemporary and creates a dynamic style and special synergy within the home