Question:
What is Vintage Furniture?
"What exactly does the term 'vintage furniture' mean? How is it different from antique furniture?" Question from reader Consuelo.
Answer:
Basically, vintage furniture is furniture that is between 30 to 100 years old. Furniture that is older than 100 years is termed antique. Anything more recent would qualify as simply used furniture. A very popular vintage look is Mid-Century Modern.
However, technically, the term vintage also refers to furniture that best represents the prevalent style of a period, the best examples of it, if you will. So simply being old will not make it vintage, even though most people use the term old and vintage interchangeably.
Vintage furniture is very popular, and not the least because:
It gives you the chance to decorate in your own unique style.
It is less expensive than buying new furniture of the same quality.
It is one of the greenest ways of furnishing your home, as you are saving furniture from the landfills, and even toxic finishes are not off-gassing any longer.
If you want to shop for vintage furniture go to garage sales and estate sales in neighborhoods that have older homes. Also, because of its popularity there are plenty of stores and online sources for vintage furniture.
