Home Tree Atlas: Home Decor Ideas and Mood Boards

Style Guide: Vintage Lighting Ideas

Light fixtures are often overlooked when it comes to a room’s style. Yet they make a big impact on the look and feel of a space. It can be hard to find a perfectly styled piece but here are some vintage lighting ideas that will help you transform your space.

Style Ideas

Color: When it comes to color choice, pastel shaded light fixtures will look great in a vintage styled room. The lighting fixtures themselves don’t even have to be vintage looking, as long as they are pastel. Colors like mint, baby blue, and yellow. A pastel colored paper lantern makes for a whimsical addition to any room (1).

Styles: See if you can find enamelled lights. Barn lights are great for this as you can find enamel pendant and wall lights – in pastel colors. For pendant lighting you have pancake lights seen in the kitchen pictures (2) and (3). On the walls you have gooseneck lights seen in the bathroom in picture (4). And for desks you’ve got anglepoise lamps (5).

Barn lighting would be the best style of lights to go for. An alternative would be vintage industrial or nautical lights.

Ceiling Medallions: There is the option of adding a ceiling medallion to frame any ceiling lights you have. Even if you have recessed lights. For pictures and ideas, have a look at my post here: Design Ideas for Decorative Ceiling Medallions.

Quick Styling Ideas and Upgrades

Some ways to quickly transform your lighting to a vintage style include: using Edison bulbs (6). For the coffee table, bedroom side tables, or dining room centerpiece – vintage style candle stands or lanterns can be used to decorate the space. Or how about using old school glass oil lanterns outdoors (7) – fuelled by citronella oil or battery powered candles. Mason jars can also be used to house candles.

When it comes to lamp shades, you want to go with fabric coned ones, with decorative edges – just like the lamp shades in picture (8).

Grand ol Chandeliers

A gorgeous chandelier makes for a grand statement piece in any room. There are the more traditional and formal crystal chandeliers with the arms reaching out. Or there are other more compact and mini vintage chandeliers (9).

DIY Ideas

Doilies can be used to create unique looking hanging lamps, just like in picture (10). Another creative idea is to fit vintage style crown molding (11) a few inches below the ceiling. This leaves space for lights to be fitted above – creating soft glowing cove lighting (The Beauty of Using Cove Lighting: Design and Ideas).

String lights are not really vintage, but they can be hung indoors to create a whimsical feel (Home Decor Ideas: Beautiful Ways to Use String Lights Indoors). For a more vintage vibe, use the Edison bulb version seen below. 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11

1 Gooseneck $188 Barn Light Electric | 2 Pancake $153 Barn Light Electric

3 Pancake $78 Amazon | 4 Swingarm $27 Amazon | 5 Banker $38 Amazon

6 String Light $145 Restoration Hardware | 7 Edison $8.84 Amazon | 8 Lamp $139 Amazon

Handmade: Simple DIY Vintage Decor Ideas

This is what Home Tree Atlas is all about. Simple and great looking decor ideas that anyone can do at home. The DIY vintage decor ideas below range from simple decor ideas such as using glass bottles as planters, to more DIY projects like taking a reclaimed window and turning it into a photo frame.

Simple DIY Decor Ideas

You can easily buy old vintage style clothing pins on Amazon here. These can be used to hang up photographs on a piece of rope just like in picture (1).

Vintage bottles can be used for a number of decor ideas around the house. They can be used to hold up flowers (2). Instead of having your kitchen liquids by the sink in their plastic brand bottles, you can pour the liquids into vintage bottles and make the area look better. For more ideas on using vintage bottles around the house check out my mood board here: Home Decor Ideas: Using Vintage Glass Bottles.

Give your closets a makeover with some vintage style paint (mint, baby pastel blue, cream), and add on some vintage handles or door knobs.

A bird cage is another item that can be used for a number of decor ideas – from housing plants and books, to jewellery organizers and candle stands. For a mood board and more ideas have a look here: Home Decor Ideas: Using Bird Cages.

Old reclaimed ladders can be upcycled and used in rooms for shelving or storage. They can also be used as a bedroom side table just like in picture (3) – Ideas for Decorating With Ladders.

Galvanised buckets can be used as a trash can or to store magazines and blankets. Have a look at this mood board for more vintage storage ideas (one of the most popular posts on Home Tree Atlas): Vintage Storage and Organization Ideas.

Getting Creative With Your Printer

There are a whole bunch of vintage DIY ideas you can do with just your printer:

Catherine from Design Editor took a vintage camera photo and got it blown up for only $3.29. You can see the framed print in picture (4). The vintage camera photo is available to download for free from her site here.

A DIY project that I did, was to create posters with vintage graphics. I printed them out on A3 card and painted in the empty space with chalkboard paint to create chalkboard posters (5). You can see the step by step guide here.

I got the graphics for the chalkboard DIY vintage posters from The Graphics Fairy. Over on her site, she has a ton of vintage graphics that are free to download. People have used them to decorate countertops, kitchen linens, or even buckets (6).

Over on Just Something I Made there are great looking apothecary labels that you can download and print for free. They can be transferred onto pillows, sewn onto towels for a little design spice (7), or used to label jars (8).

More Craftier Vintage DIY Project Ideas

I wrote up a post showing all the different things you can do with old reclaimed windows. In picture (9) you can see one being used as a photo frame. In my mood board here they have also been turned into room dividers, mirror frames, kitchen command centers, and even into DIY vintage furniture pieces (cabinet and coffee table).

Vintage and antique door knobs can be used as towel hooks or as curtain tie backs (10).

In my Vintage Style Wallpaper mood board I show a range of different design ideas. My favorite style is the textured wallpaper, the anaglyptic paper designs seen in picture (11).

A few simple vintage DIY project ideas include turning normal looking jars vintage by using Mod Podge and food coloring (12) – you can follow along with the step by step guide here. Or how about printing/stamping/transferring vintage graphics onto cork or fabric pieces to create your own coasters (13).

I’ve saved the best idea for last. By simply sewing together a number of doilies, you can create a long table runner for your coffee or dining room table (14). 1/2/3/9/10/11/13/14

DIY Pendant Light Ideas: From Paper Lanterns To Concrete Lamps

The good thing about most of the DIY pendant light ideas shown in the mood board above, is that they don’t require any special wiring. Making them easy and simple home decor projects.

A Wrap Around

Veneer strips, twine, and doilies are some of the materials that can be used to wrap around a pendant light to make creative and beautiful DIY hanging lamp shades. You can follow along with the veneer DIY project seen in picture (1) here.

The DIY string lamp chandelier seen in the outdoor picture (2) can be adapted to have a hanging light fitted inside just like the veneer project. The technique used to create the string lanterns can also be done with other materials other than string to create different styled lights. Balloons were used to create the round shape. Twine that was dipped in cornstarch was then wrapped around the balloon. The twine hardens and is set in place. The balloon can be popped and removed – follow along with the step by step instructions here. A similar technique can be done with doily patterns seen in picture (3).

For DIY string light ideas have a look at my mood board posts here:

Paper Lanterns

A paper lantern makes for a great DIY pendant lamp base. I’ve seen people glue circle cut outs of maps, geometric cut outs, and even playing cards to a paper lantern, creating their own homemade pendant lights. The DIY project by Nichole in picture (4) uses a large paper lantern and coffee filters to create one big fluff ball of a light. It is one time consuming project though, taking around 10 hours or so to glue the 1000 coffee filters one by one.

Hang a number of paper lanterns in a group, at different heights, to create a paper lantern chandelier. You could have string lights fed into the lanterns, or have one pendant light hanging in the middle of the ensemble to light it all up.

A simple and and quick paper lantern project is to create an ombre effect – just like the lantern in picture (5). This can be done by either dip dying the paper lantern or using spray paint to progressively add color to the white lantern.

Going Ombre Again

If you can find yourself some snow globe like pendant lights, there is another ombre/gradient lighting project you can do. Over on Design Love Fest there is a tutorial on how to elegantly spray an ombre color palette onto white glass pendant lamp shades (6).

Concrete and Bottles

Ben over on Homemade Modern used soda and water bottles to create simple concrete molds – creating the industrial chic pendant lamps seen in picture (7).

For DIY lamp ideas have a look at my mood board post here: DIY Lamp Ideas: From Recycling Felt to Dip Dyed Shades.

Style Guide: Vintage Flooring Ideas and Designs

It isn’t easy to find vintage flooring ideas, as there are only a few designs that really work. I’ll be on the lookout for more ideas, but here are some to get you going with your own room makeovers.

Vintage Tile Flooring

Ceramic tiles are a classic choice for flooring. For a vintage style you can go for the more traditional black and white floor design seen in the bathroom pictures (1) and (2). An inexpensive flooring option would be to use black and white vinyl flooring that looks like a tiled design. Another direction would be the more decorative and colorful tiles seen in pictures (3) and (4).

A mosaic of small Hexagon floor tiles also looks great in a vintage styled room (5).

Vintage Floor Patterns

Hardwood flooring is another choice for a vintage style floor. You can arrange the wooden planks into a pattern for a more decorative look. Take a look at the herringbone pattern in pictures (6) and (7). You’ve also got the popular chevron pattern (8).

The chevron pattern can also be used when tiling floors. It is also a great pattern for area rugs (9).

Area Rugs

For those of you that don’t have hardwood floors or even if you do, area rugs are a quick way of adding some vintage flooring style to any room.

Some quick ideas include using floral rugs (seen above), or solid pastel shades. Above I mentioned chevron patterned rugs. Don’t forget about those really fluffy vintage style rugs (aka shag rugs) seen in pictures (10) (11) and (12). 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/Vintage Carpet