Get one thing, live with it for a month, then get the next thing. Not a rule, just what’s worked for me. The common mistake is arriving at a fair with a list and leaving with a whole room’s worth, because then it reads as a set, and a room that looks like a set is worse than a room that looks like nothing much at all.
Brown furniture is cheap at the moment. It has been for years now. Large Victorian and Edwardian pieces go at auction for less than the flat-pack equivalent, largely because nobody fancies moving them, and a chest of drawers made in 1890 out of solid mahogany will still be sliding open properly long after the warehouse sideboard has swollen shut after one humid summer. Start there. A chest, or a side table, something you’ll use rather than walk around.
Then a mirror. Old glass where the silvering has gone patchy does something to a room that new glass can’t do, it holds the light differently softer, slightly wrong in a way you notice without being able to name. People buy them for the frames, the glass is the reason to keep them.
The longcase clock is the one I push, and I know it’s a lot to ask, so visit https://dutchtimepieces.com/product-category/antique-clocks/longcase-clocks/ if you’re considering buying one. They need a wall that isn’t next to a radiator, they need winding, they need to be properly level or they stop, and setting one up takes an afternoon. Worth doing anyway. A room with a tick in it feels lived in even when there’s nobody there. Most people get used to the sound in about three days and then can’t sleep without it. Prices range wildly, and the plain oak country ones are where the value is rather than the grand London mahogany examples everyone photographs. Look at the movement harder than you look at the case. A case can be repaired by anyone.
After that it’s the small stuff, and that’s where you can afford to be careless. Brass candlesticks. Old books bought by the metre that nobody is ever going to read, which is a bit dishonest, but they look right. Copper pans on a hook. Rugs, and the wear matters, a rug with a bald patch has been somewhere.
Things I’d skip are matching dining suites, anything sold as being “in the style of” something else, and the urge to make one room a period room while the rest of the house stays in this decade. Mixing is completely fine. A moulded plastic chair next to a Georgian table is fine. Paint the walls any colour you want.
Last thing is to measure the doorway before you buy the wardrobe, and measure the turn at the top of the stairs as well, because that’s the one that catches people out. I mention it because it got me.
