Easy Ways to Create a Colorful Vintage Interior

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Adding color to your home can be really intimidating and scary. If you love vintage items then there are a lot of easy ways to start adding color into your interior design style. When you walk into a room in your home you want it to make you happy and, for me, that means prioritizing color.

Try to think of adding color to your apartment or home as a creative exercise, a trial and error experiment. If you pick out a color that doesn’t work don’t be hard on yourself. It can take a while to settle into what you love and what makes you happy. Let’s try to figure out what colors and styles make you feel most alive!

Decide on color schemes that spark joy

Search Pinterest and Instagram accounts to see what home styles and colors speak to you. I bounced around between vintage design styles when I first bought my house because I didn’t pay attention to what colors and decades made me really happy. I learned that I can’t really settle on one color scheme because I love rainbow decor. This leaves the door wide open to buying whatever I like, just leaving neutral white and black items behind.

Maybe you love a vibrant 70s aesthetic with avacado green and orange. Or you love a cottagecore vibe with garden greens and mustard yellows. Spend some quality time getting inspired by other people’s homes so you can find your style.

If you struggle with figuring out your design styles, what colors you like OR you have too many things that you love… let’s chat! I’d love to help you hone in on what your dream home looks like and what sparks the most joy for you. You can book a one on one interior design call with me and we’ll figure out a solution to what you’re struggling with.

Start with neutral to calm your nerves

There’s no reason to push yourself out of your comfort zone with painting a room bright pink if you’re nervous about color. Start with a neutral color like white or cream for walls and furniture. That way you can play with all different kinds of color schemes without spending hours painting a wall or hundreds of dollars on an orange couch.

Another benefit with having a neutral base color in your home is that you can easily change color schemes between holiday season. I have a pastel rainbow color scheme in the spring and summer months. But when Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s Day roll around my home colors completely change.

Choose colorful vintage furniture

If you feel ready to add color to your home but are too nervous to commit to painting walls (Or you live in an apartment and can’t paint the walls anyway) buy some colorful vintage furniture. I have the best luck finding cheap colorful furniture at flea markets and antique malls. I don’t enjoy painting furniture myself so I like to find already painted furniture, like my $150 antique mall pie safe pictured above and my $25 green shelf that I turn into my rainbow shelf.

If you do feel comfortable painting your own furniture that opens up a bunch of doors! You can thrift really cheap furniture and paint it whatever color you want. And if you don’t like the color you can just start over.

Add removable color

I talked about one of my favorite ways to add color on the Apartment Guide blog which is to create removable decor like garlands. I wrote a blog post with 10 Easy DIY Vintage Garland Ideas to help inspire you. Use poster putty and bakers twine to hang anything from vintage greeting cards to vintage flower seed packets and you have instant color.

Or cut out colorful cardstock into whatever shape you like and adhere it to a wall, door and furniture piece. I did this when I cut out atomic starbursts for my front door and mid century modern record cabinet.

I learned from my friend on Instagram @vintagevspot to tape holiday die cuts on kitchen cabinets. I LOVE this idea and started doing that over Halloween and Christmas. During the winter months I taped giant pink felt snowflakes chargers from Target to my cabinets for added color.

Test temporary solutions

If you’re scared to add a colorful backsplash to your kitchen or bathroom, test first to see if you’ll like it. When I wanted to create my mint green bathroom I bought a small amount of beadboard and got paint samples. I painted swatches on the beadboard and leaned it up against the bathroom backsplash for a few days to see how I felt.

An even easier way is to grab some cardboard and paint a giant paint swatch and tape it to whatever you’re considering painting. Or if you aren’t interested in painting, cover cardboard with colorful fabric or paint and use it to back shelving. I did this in my dining room, I covered cardboard with a vintage sheet (Vintage sheet idea blog post) and hot glued the cardboard to the back of the shelf. What was once just a plain white shelf is now an explosion of colorful wildflowers. I can rip the cardboard out whenever I want and pick out new fabric, it’s a temporary thing but I love it so much that I’ve had that fabric up for years.

Thrift for easy and cheap colorful vintage items

Even if you have the most neutral space in the world, white walls and white furniture, you can still create a very colorful space using decor pieces. I wrote a blog post on 10 Cheap and Common Vintage Thrift Store Items and there’s some perfect suggestions for things to look out for. Let’s say you’re going for a 1950s pastel theme, lots of pinks, blues and greens. You can go to a thrift shop and look for vintage or new books with pink, blue or green spines. You can search for bowls, vinyl records, vases and knick knacks in those color.

I love to add color using thrifted vintage blankets. I made a video showing my favorite blankets that you can watch below.

If you buy something at a thrift shop and bring it home and don’t like it, it’s okay! You spent very little money on it because it’s secondhand and you can just donate it again. Thrifting for colorful vintage items takes the pressure off. It’s one thing to go to Target or Home Goods and spend $200 on decor and end up hating it. It’s another when you spend $20 while thrifting.

You can check out my master list of 25 Affordable Vintage Pieces to Start a Collection which you can find at estate sales, flea markets and antique stores.

So go have some fun with color! Be kind with yourself and try some new things, be adventerous! If you have any questions feel free to send me a message on Instagram or leave me a comment on this post. If you’re struggling with where to start check out my blog post on How to Get Through a Home Decorating Creative Block.