Shabby chic style gains foothold in interior design

By Simone Andrea Mayer Nov 3, 2011, 3:07 GMT

Berlin - From chairs with rusty metal parts to tables with chipping paint, shabby chic has become fashionable in interior decorating.

The trend is giving flea market finds and furniture rescued from the trash a second life in people's homes. Often grandma's treasures are combined with things like old-fashioned bottles, milk cans with patina and dried roses hanging from the ceiling to complete the look.

This style of decorating is like a trip back in time. Old furniture fills every nook and cranny, and the scratches and dents they bear are witnesses to forgotten family stories.

Sonja Bannick, an expert in interior decorating, digs these stories up and retells them in her house.

'The shabby chic style stands for the reuse and the misuse of old things,' said Bannick, a writer and photographer for a German interior decorating magazine. It can be old furniture or old objects such as grandmother's brooches, which are stuck into scarves and displayed as decorations or a weather-worn ladder hung on the wall and used as shelving.

'We try to look at these things from a different angle,' said Bannick. 'You don't ask yourself 'Do I need this?' rather 'How can I paint it or find a way to decorate with it?''

The trend isn't new, but it's just now gaining acceptance in the marketplace, said trend analyst Gabriela Kaiser. People have been asking themselves whether they want to let the style into their homes. This isn't about antiques; some of the pieces of furniture are broken and ready to be hauled away.

'The reason many people go for this style of decorating is because they are searching for traces of their past,' said Kaiser. 'We are enclosed in a world that's getting smaller. There is a lot of technology and everything is sterile. Our furniture can have a slick surface and it is designed so that it no longer requires handles or knobs,' she said.

But this progress has side-effects: we miss the feeling of security. 'We seek a stress-free calm island where we don't have to run constantly from A to B and where we don't have to be reachable on a mobile phone or computer 24 hours a day,' said Kaiser. 'And on this island of withdrawal the world should be contemplative and comfortable.'

Exactly this tranquility is what shabby chic style communicates. Old suitcases are stacked up to make a coffee table and rusty, but still lovely shelves, are placed in the bathroom next to the sterile radiator to hold knick-knacks.

Seldom are there enough of these things in the attic to convert the entire home to shabby style, but that doesn't matter because it's best to go slow.

Bannick advocates collecting things bit by bit like a hunter-gatherer. 'Otherwise, one's own personal touch gets lost.' There's another reason to treat it like collecting: 'People are proud of things they find at flea markets.'

There's almost no limit to creative ideas. The Norwegian authors Ellen Dyrop and Hanna Kristindottir make candleholders out of sherry glasses, and a room name plate or magnet bulletin board out of a silver tray. They also use old embroidery to create rugs and make pillowcases from pot holders.

Old items and antique-look decorations are best combined with top-of-the-line modern furniture. This juxtaposes two worlds. The easiest thing is to take a modern piece in a subtle colour with a clear design and place grandma's colourful, plush wingback chair alongside it, said Kaiser.

Decorative items often need to be reworked before they become eye- catching, said Bannick. Pieces of furniture also can also be reworked. For example, she painted a dark, solid wood armoire white and roughed up the edges with sandpaper.

People who don't have time to rework the pieces themselves can buy reproductions that look like they have been used. The market is currently flooded with such items.

'About 70 per cent of such furniture has been given a faux antique finish,' said Ursula Geismann, a trend analyst at Germany's furniture industry association. This is achieved by taking new wooden furniture and scratching and roughing it up. Chemicals are used to give shelves a patina that makes them look like they were outside for years.