Retro Style: Colours and Furnishings Vintage Look

The popular retro style is immediately recognisable - by expressive patterns and strong colours such as orange, red and green, which convince with expressive character. Add velvety or plush armchairs and striking short or long pile rugs. If you feel like making your interior style a little more retro, we have a few important tips for you here.

Table of contents

1. Retro interior design ideas: Before/After pictures from our paint community
2. What is retro - and how is it different from vintage?
3. Retro furnishing: Design tips and DIY projects
4. FAQ: Frequently asked questions

Retro interior design ideas: Before/After pictures from our painting community

Do you want to furnish your home in retro or vintage style and are looking for ideas and inspiration? Our MissPompadour painting community has already tried out a few things here and provides you with exciting retro living ideas:

What is retro - and what is the difference to vintage?

The term retro comes from Latin and means "backwards". Retro style is therefore a style of furnishing that is oriented towards expressions of earlier times. There is a wide range of styles.
The retro living style includes

• the French-Nordic style, which is also called romantic vintage style, and
• the Industrial Style or the Mid-Century Style, which is inspired by the shapes and colours of the 1950s and 1960s.

The difference between retro and vintage
Retrodesigns, retro living and furnishing styles and especially retro furniture are - despite the similar look - not the same as vintage.

• Vintage furnishings don't just look "old", they are, because the pieces of furniture really do come from earlier times.
• Retro refers to new furniture that is visually based on old designs

Retro Interiors: Design Tips and DIY Projects

The choice of furniture and the colour scheme for your interior walls will depend on your desired era or preferred design style. We can distinguish between several distinct styles:

• French-Nordic Style:
  Nostalgia and romance are key to this interior design style. Use classic French fabrics and materials, and add accents with cool Nordic colours – think white, grey, and blue. **White** is definitely the dominant shade in this style. The aim is to create a serene, slightly antiquated, romantic ambience that exudes calm and comfort.
  Furniture can be pre-loved – **signs of wear** are not only welcome but often deliberately created.
  Old zinc and enamel vessels make great decorations, as do scented candles and soaps – because **scents** play an important role in this style.
  Classic elements for this living style include **colourful, graphic patterns** such as diamonds, stripes, large polka dots in black and white or **pastel shades**, as well as motifs from nature.
  DIY Idea: Give your existing furniture a charming shabby-chic look with a fresh coat of white or blue paint.

• Industrial Style:
  As the name suggests, this interior style is dominated by the use of old **industrial furniture**, like that commonly found in the late 19th century. This style appears raw and unfinished. Materials like untreated wood – seen in old workbenches and office chairs, for example – and even rusted metal play a significant **role**. The Industrial Style is particularly well-suited to a loft, but a regular home can also be uniquely designed in this way.
  Upcycling is the keyword for this decor, and it's inextricably linked with the Industrial Style. By combining old and new designs, a pre-loved wooden table, various vintage armchairs, or an old leather sofa fit in perfectly. You can also build furniture and side tables from everyday items like wooden pallets or wine crates.
  Since the **Industrial Style** is quite stark, you should avoid too many playful patterns. However, **graphic patterns** work very well with this style.
  DIY Idea: Give old flea market furniture a fresh new style with a coat of paint. With our metal paints, you can easily repaint metal furniture.

• Mid-Century Style:
  This style emerged in the 1940s and continued to evolve until the late 1960s. It's characterised by **straightforward, minimalist design**, which often adopted streamlined, curved shapes in the 1950s. Later, the use of then-new tropical woods like teak and rosewood became characteristic of this style.
  Clear lines, combined with soft organic curves and patterns, are typical of the Mid-Century Style.
  DIY Ideas: You can easily adapt existing furniture to this style with a fresh coat of paint and by replacing the furniture feet and handles.

Create a Vintage Look at Home: Classic Furniture Finds

Beautiful and functional **vintage furniture** isn't always easy to find. You might strike it lucky on online marketplaces, at second-hand shops, or car boot sales, perhaps even discovering an original kidney-shaped table. If you want to customise these unique pieces even further, or if they just need a little love, you can transform them with paint and furniture wax to create a gorgeous shabby chic look.

Retro Colours: Find Your Perfect Shades

If you want to create a retro look in your home, selecting the right colour is key. You can either paint the entire room in a particular retro shade or just a section of the walls. By giving your furniture a fresh coat of paint, you can easily add accents and give them a brand-new look. We have the perfect Retro colour samples for every style:

• French-Nordic-Style:
  The colour spectrum for this style is soft and muted, featuring many shades of white. Beige tones, light grey variations, and, used sparingly, pastel green, rosé, and delicate violet are the most important hues.
  Take a look at our selection of pastel shades – you'll find many colours that are softened with a touch of grey and are perfect as retro wall paint.

• Industrial style:
  For the industrial style, it is best to use cool white tones and grey in all shades of intensity - from very light to an almost black anthracite, which is also suitable as wall paint.
  Grey tones such as the dark Grey with Black or the almost black Black with Slate are also suitable for painting metal furniture. Our house brand MissPompadour - Black with Velvet is a colour shade for your furniture that perfectly matches this style of living.

• Mid-century style:
  As retro wall paints, off-white tones are suitable for the mid-century style and strong colours are suitable for the design of individual walls or as accent colours for furniture - use the colour scheme of petrol, blue to dark green here. Honey-coloured woods, which are typical of the Mid-Century style, stand out particularly well against this.

FAQ: Frequently asked questions

To make sure that no questions remain unanswered, we have compiled the most frequently asked questions for you here