Keeley Harris - Style Me Vintage: Home: A practical and inspirational guide to retro interior design

Do you want to inject a bit of vintage style into your home, but dont know where to start?

A vintage home is something that can be easy to create and more importantly, live with! If you want to avoid off-the-peg, flatpack living, this is the book for you.

Creating a home that functions and contains everything you need, as well as one that reflects your personality, is a difficult balance to achieve. Your home should be where your heart is; somewhere to invite your friends and family to enjoy lifes milestones. Aim to make it a place to relax as well as somewhere individual with your personal touches. Opting for vintage can create a look as unique as you; not just a functional space, your home can, and should, reflect your tastes and style perfectly.

You may already own some period items of furniture or crockery, or you may never have even thought about using vintage in your home. This book aims to guide you through the styles of the different decades and, with a little extra information about key events and the designers that influenced the times, encourage you to search out special and exciting vintage finds for your home.

As a dealer in vintage ceramics and furniture for many years (I started out when I was just 15) I have gained a wealth of knowledge about the styles of previous eras, developed a keen eye for what sells and a feel for what looks good within a room setting. I enjoy the sense of satisfaction in knowing that someone loved a piece as much as I did when I bought it giving it a revival within a different setting, instead of letting it gather dust in a corner or be thrown away.

Anyone can buy a vintage piece for their home, unlike a piece of clothing it does not have to fit you; just your home. The secret is to buy what you really love and what works for you and your space. You can mix and match eras if you want to; there are no strict rules. The key thing to remember is vintage is not just for admiring behind glass; it is functional and meant to be used.

Whether you want to style one room or the whole house, use this book to give you an insight into homes styled with pieces from the 1920s1970s, defining how and why dcor, soft furnishings and furniture differed from decade to decade. You will gain a clearer picture about each period and be able to know which key pieces to buy to get the look for your dream house.

Alfred Meakin pottery in the Bamboo pattern.

I live in a 1960s house in Leeds and the interior has influences of 50s and 60s style, as these are the decades I most love. I dont live in a museum and enjoy mixing vintage with new items that have a vintage style I want to encourage you to do the same. My passion is for bright colour, pattern and things that match, and this is a key theme throughout my home. I treasure my Ercol dining table, my 60s dressing table and collection of vintage ceramics. I would never part with my Taunton Vale mixing bowl and the 50s whisk I picked up years ago, even though I never bake!

The best bit about being a vintage dealer is acting as caretaker to a vast array of ceramics, glassware, artwork and lighting, looking after it as if it were my own until it leaves me to add a little bit of vintage joy to someone elses living room or kitchen. Each vintage piece has a story to tell and deserves a new lease of life.

Taking a nostalgic look back at the past offers a plethora of inspiration, giving you the tools you need to create a truly unique home. This book does not aim to help you create a time warp house but instead guides you through styles, colours and items that can shape a vintage home.

The first section of this book covers vintage for the home, where to buy it and what to look for to make an impact. Learn tips about where you can go vintage hunting and arm yourself with the skills you need to be confident in buying the right things. There is a gentle brush past each decade highlighting key influences, decorative styles and must-haves. Pick up more detailed tips too as I guide you through key rooms in each decade, suggesting things to look out for and highlighting the subtle differences between some eras and the vast differences between others.

Finally, you will get a chance to look around some real vintage-styled homes some are a pitch-perfect homage to a decade, whereas others give a nod to an era of inspiration. Find out from the owners what inspired their look. Learn about their best buys and bargains along the way, gleaning a few insider tips from them on how to create a similar look. Become au fait with recent vintage home styles that are popular and see how they draw from a variety of decades and discover great suppliers to check out along the way.

Style Me Vintage: Home is not a price guide or an in-depth history book. This book has been written to gently guide and inspire you to give you an I could do that feeling, whether you are happy to have the odd vintage piece, mix and match the decades or decide to do a complete homage to one era. I hope that once you have read this book, you will go out and start hunting for great vintage pieces for your home. Unleash the interior designer in you and enjoy; a vintage home takes time to create, but is well worth waiting for.

I must say or write the word vintage a hundred times or more each day, but what does this term really mean? Vintage is a word that started life describing wines and cars, but then moved into being a description used for fashion and music from previous decades. To most people it means high quality or classic, it represents the best of its time, or something that has enduring appeal. It now describes so many things, and is often used to define a style or homage to a particular era or look.

This is where vintage for the home comes in my take on it is that the name vintage acts as an umbrella to cover six decades of design and fashionable styles. Underneath this umbrella are many very different looks that are era-specific, as well as styles and fashions that have been born out of using vintage items. For instance you might want to create a Shabby Chic, Industrial, Retro, Rustic Vintage, Eclectic or Mid-century theme in your home, and these are all of a vintage style. In this book I will introduce you to all of those era-specific looks plus the fashions, so you can then decide on the vintage look that suits you, your tastes and your home.

The popularity of vintage for the home is at an all-time high. Its ultra fashionable to reuse items and buy second-hand and turning to vintage is one way of achieving this. There is a new wave of people who may not have considered it before, joining the hordes of those die-hard vintage fans that have been buying it for years. When I tour around the UK selling at fairs and markets I am amazed at what a varied bunch my customers are; a broad range of ages and backgrounds, these people appreciate good classic design and have a genuine enthusiasm for vintage style.