Imagine this: you're walking around a brocante (French flea market) and you’ve just found the perfect framed print, or maybe you’ve just come across a loose page out of an old botanical book. Next comes the tricky part. Where do you place it in your home?

Here are our ‘Fleurette-approved’ tips for integrating vintage prints into your home décor…

It all starts with the print. At Les Fleurs, we’re always looking for art with floral designs, French countryside scenes, and historical landmarks of Paris and France. Over the years, we’ve found a few different types of antique and vintage artwork we love.

Paintings: oil, acrylic or watercolor mediums
Original illustrations
Engravings, etchings and lithographs
Antique book pages, or vintage cards that have the potential to become artwork!

Each piece of artwork is entirely unique and can add charm to your décor. The hardest part is to find the special piece that is meant for your home!

What do you gravitate towards most: the historic century-old paintings in vintage frames with little knicks and scruffs that show their age, or pages from a botanical book that read like a personal diary with delicate hand-drawn illustrations? Perhaps you love old postcards that each tell a story, with cursive hand-written notes and postmark stamps from places far away. Whatever fits your style, here are three ways to display vintage prints inside your home!

1. Hang on a wall

We can’t get away without stating the obvious: the most traditional way to display framed artwork is to hang it on a wall. Spice it up by placing it in an unexpected room, such as a kitchen or mudroom! Collect a few pieces and create a gallery wall, or stage them with other vintage items like we did with this stack of breadboards.

Pro tip: Place a few small pieces of double-sided tape on the back of the print, at the top and bottom, to ensure the page doesn’t slip down inside the frame.

2. Prop up on a shelf

Not all artwork needs to be hung on the wall! We love to use framed pieces as props by simply leaning them on a wall or against other decorative objects.

In this example below, Sandra took a page out of an antique book of floral engravings and framed it in a more modern floating glass frame. She propped it up against a vintage window-pane-turned-mirror on top of a distressed commode in her foyer. Add a book and a French candle and you’ve just mastered the antique French countryside look! It’s effortless yet it elevates the styling of your home.

3. Display in a standing frame

Our new favorite thing to do is place vintage postcards in modern gold-toned floating frames. These often come with a little stand to prop up the frame. They can stand freely on top of your mantle or console table, or on top of a stack of your favorite books. We love to use these double-sided frames for postcards to easily display both the vintage image and the hand-written note on the other side!

Whenever you go antiquing next, keep an eye out for vintage paintings or loose pages from old books that can be turned into framed artwork to spruce up your home decor!

Want to recreate any of Sandra's looks inside your home? Check out these prints to get started:

shop framed art

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