Victorian terrace interior ideas: restoring period character

The best Victorian terrace interiors start by restoring the original architecture, then let modern life fit around it. Keep or reinstate the cornice, ceiling roses and picture rails; save the tiled hall floor if you have one; choose soft, warm colours rather than brilliant white; and add modern kitchens, lighting and furniture in a way that respects the proportions of the rooms.

Terraces built in Queen Victoria's reign, from 1837 to 1901, follow a familiar plan: a narrow hall, front and back reception rooms, and a staircase rising along the party wall. Many were stripped of features in the twentieth century. The good news is that most of what was lost can be put back.

Cornice and ceiling roses

Plasterwork gives a Victorian room its sense of finish. The front room, used for receiving visitors, often had the richest cornice and the largest rose; back rooms and bedrooms were plainer.

• Keep what survives. Old plasterwork is often repairable even when it looks tired. Clogged detail can usually be cleaned rather than replaced.
• Match the hierarchy. If you are reinstating, put the grander rose in the front room and a simpler one in the back room and bedrooms.
• Check neighbours. Houses in the same terrace were often finished alike. A neighbour's surviving cornice is the best guide to what yours had.
• Listed buildings need consent. Historic England notes that removing original features such as cornices or picture rails from a listed building requires consent.

Our history of the Victorian ceiling rose explains how they developed.

Picture rails and wall proportions

The picture rail did a practical job: pictures hung from hooks on the rail, so the plaster did not need to be nailed. It also divided the wall, with the frieze above it often treated differently from the wall below.

If your rails have gone, look for a faint line or filled holes in the plaster at a consistent height around the room. Reinstating a rail at that height restores the proportions instantly. Paint the frieze and ceiling the same colour to make a tall room feel more intimate, or carry the wall colour up to the cornice to make it feel taller.

The tiled hallway

The tiled hall floor is one of the great features of the Victorian terrace. In his guide for the Building Conservation Directory, the tile restorer Peter Thompson notes that geometric and encaustic floors appeared from the 1860s in public buildings, churches and larger villas, and were common in ordinary terraced houses by the 1890s. Encaustic tiles, with their inlaid coloured clays, were revived by Herbert Minton from a medieval technique.

• Lift the carpet carefully. Many floors were covered over in the 1960s and 1970s and survive underneath.
• Repair, do not replace. Thompson reports that around nine in ten old tiled floors are repairable.
• Use gentle cleaners. Choose products made for unglazed tiles, with as little water as possible.

Restore the bones of the house first. Furniture and colour can change every decade; cornice and tiles should last another century.

Colours that suit a terrace

Victorian interiors were richer and darker than many people expect, but you do not need to recreate them literally. A few principles help:

• Avoid brilliant white. Historic England notes that modern whites are brighter and colder than historic whites. A warm off-white on ceilings and plasterwork looks more natural.
• Go deeper in the hall. A strong colour below a dado and a lighter one above suits a narrow hall and hides scuffs.
• Use deeper tones at night. Back reception rooms used in the evening can take dark greens, reds and blues well.
• Keep plaster detail tonal. Paint cornice and rose in the ceiling colour or a shade off it.

Our guide to heritage colour palettes has fuller suggestions.

Mixing period character with modern living

Most terraces now have a knocked-through ground floor or a rear extension. That is fine, as long as the original rooms keep their character.

• Keep a visual break. Where two rooms are opened up, a nib of wall or a downstand beam where the wall was helps the two ceilings, and their cornices, make sense.
• Let the extension be modern. A clean, simple extension often sits better beside a restored front room than a pastiche one.
• Light with wall lights. They suit the scale of Victorian rooms and leave the ceiling rose for a pendant. Mains wall lights should be fitted by a qualified electrician, under Part P of the Building Regulations in England and Wales.
• Visit for ideas. Sambourne House at 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington, the home of the Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne, keeps its original Victorian interiors and is a vivid picture of how a terraced townhouse was lived in.

Where to start

Work from the structure outwards: plasterwork and floors first, then colour, then lighting and furniture. Our heritage and classical collection includes ceiling roses and details hand-cast to order in Shrewsbury in natural plaster, ready to paint with emulsion. See also our wall lights.