After you’ve filled your home with the softest sofas and recycled rag rugs, it’s time to add the finishing touches and bring it to life. With the help of vintage home decor shops, you can do so with sustainable secondhand stylings that also have fascinating and unique stories to tell.
Buying something from a bygone time is one of the core tenets of sustainable interior design—and pretty much anything else! No new resources have to be mined, farmed, or processed (with chemicals), and you’re saving those vintage home decorations from an otherwise grim fate of rotting in landfills.
Plus, by supporting these retro home decor shops, you can fill your living areas with one-of-a-kind items that are far more special than anything found at a big box store.
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The Best Places To Shop Vintage Home Decor
Etsy offers the largest selection of handmade, artisan goods collected from craftsmen and curators all around the world, giving you endless ways to buy preloved and support small businesses.
Before you get sucked into the Etsy black hole, don’t miss Microscope Telescope and their curated collection of unique curios and conversion starters.
Despite its name, A La Modern is all about retro home decor, all salvaged and collected by the two show owners themselves.
Index: Vintage Home Decor Online Stores
- Micro Telescope Jump to brand
- Rust Belt Threads Jump to brand
- Chairish Jump to brand
- A La Modern Jump to brand
- Simply Chi Jump to brand
- Roger Appleyard Jump to brand
- One Kings Lane Jump to brand
- Etsy Vintage Jump to brand
- eBay Jump to brand
Micro Telescope
Microscope Telescope’s Retro Home Decor
Price Range: $3–$3,700
Being one of the best vintage home decor Etsy shops is an accomplishment—because there are a lot of them. Microscope Telescope earns the title with mid-century modern vintage wares mixed with a splash of science and retro tech.
If you’re a science nerd, you’ll love items like the 1960s Voltmeter and other antique lab equipment. But if science isn’t how you prefer to style your home, check them out for vintage brass, furniture, lighting, vinyls, clocks, rugs, wall hangings, maps, globes, paintings, cameras, office items, baskets, and kitchen essentials.
Whether you’re looking for affordable vintage home decor or want to splurge on a big sustainable rug for your living room, their unique collection is ready to transport any budget to a bygone era.
Microscope Telescope’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Danielle is the face behind this “vintage meets science” Etsy shop after developing a passion for mid-century furniture while curating pieces for her home.
Her love affair for furniture and globes combined with her boyfriend’s love of space, typography, and science led to a brand featured by Switched at Birth TV show, Architectural Digest, and the Kate Spade pop-up, to name just a few.
They are always shopping for items for their Seattle, Washington house. Most pieces are from thrift stores, estate sales, and surpluses and every item tells a unique story or has an interesting history regaled in the product descriptions. Seattleites can schedule a pick-up to reduce emissions.
Rust Belt Threads
Rust Belt Threads’ Vintage Home Decor
Price Range: $20–$265
Rust Belt Threads is bringing an eclectic collection of vintage house decor, barware, and clothing to people everywhere. This Star Seller on Etsy has made over 5,000 sales and earned a 5-star rating. If you join this group of customers, you’ll be among the likes of the creators of the Mad Men TV series, to whom Rust Belt Threads has sold some mid-century barware.
This vintage decor store boasts a consistent collection of mugs, glasses, decanters, decorative items, blankets, bowls, pottery, knick-knacks, cookware, and other practical yet decorative pieces. Most are dated between the 1920s and 1980s.
Because of its vintage nature, the barware and dinnerware are not dishwasher safe, so if you’re eyeing the cute vintage peachy pink Beldno salad bowl set, know that it must be washed with care by hand (preferably with zero waste dish soap).
Rust Belt Threads’ Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Shop owner Amanda has been obsessed with all things vintage since the 1990s. She started with fashion but has since expanded to interesting pieces for the whole home. This vintage home decor store is run out of her home in Buffalo.
Chairish
About Chairish’s Vintage Home Decor
Price Range: $5–$5,000
Chairish has an inventory that’s 85% vintage and, since its inception, has managed to keep more than 700,000 pre-loved items in circulation, including tableware and barware, building and design, room accents and accessories, textiles, and organization accessories.
From vintage eco-friendly wallpapers (which you can sample for a mere $1) to ultra-rare collectible wall tapestries from the 1500s, Chairish and ‘stylish’ have more in common than the “ish”.
Chairish’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
By giving pre-owned pieces another cycle, they’re helping to avoid resource impacts typically associated with manufacturing. The company has even published a Resale Report where you’ll find the benefits of resale brought into focus.
The company CEOs are a husband and wife team who are very hands-on, but they have a team of curators who scour Europe and the US for inventory.
A La Modern
A La Modern’s Vintage Decor
Price Range: $10–$300
One of the best online vintage home decor stores with a large range, A La Modern is à la mode. To bridge the gap between modern and vintage, they specialize in vintage houseware items from Japan, Scandinavia, America, and Africa—loved by more than 3,000 customers.
Decorate your home with their impressive selection of ceramics and pottery, glassware, metalworks, artwork, sculptures, textiles, sustainable fabrics, decorative LPs, ephemeral pieces, ethical electronics, and lighting. Expect to find a variety of materials used like ceramic, glass, clay, wood, metal, aluminum, plastic resin, canvas, and fabrics like cotton and linen.
Most options range from the 50s retro home decor to that from the 1980s, although you’ll find some fringe items from different eras and countries.
If vases are your thing, make sure you pop in to check out their extensive range of gorgeous Japanese stoneware.
Ethical & Sustainability Practices
A La Modern prioritizes mid-century and vintage modern items, but they also sell antiques and non-vintage goodies. Shop owners Bryan and Linda act as the curators of all their products, most of which are found locally in southern California.
Simply Chi
Simply Chi’s Retro Home Decor
Price Range: $12–$1,800
Simply Chi is one of Etsy’s most-loved vintage decor online stores, with more than 12,000 sales and a 5-star average rating.
Prioritizing items from the 1980s and 1990s, you’ll find hundreds of ever-rotating vintage home decor items in all kinds of categories: lighting and lamps, furniture, kitchen and barware items, wall art, office items, baskets, eco-friendly planters and pots, toys, general home decor, and trinkets.
Add some flair to your garden with the Italian Tiger Planter Pot, or feed your tableware addiction with Native American vases and pottery. Most offerings have an earthy, organic, or boho feel thanks to antique metals (silver, bronze, gold), wood (organic wood, bamboo, rattan), ceramic, glass, porcelain, and stoneware.
Simply Chi’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Owner Chi grew up with a family of farmers in Arcata, California which is “basically the biggest hippieville ever” (her words, not ours!). Her background contributes to her taste in organic, rustic, and simple products, but as a self-proclaimed girly girl, she also likes a little bit of glam. The culmination of these eclectic interests has been featured in Flea Market Decor Magazine, Design Sponge, Martha Stewart Living Magazine, and Own It Network.
She sources pretty much everything herself, but she’s accompanied on her thrifting adventures by her youngest son Charlie.
Roger Appleyard
Roger Appleyard’s Retro Home Decor
Price Range: $10–$30,000
Have you ever thought, “You know what would look nice in my umbrella stand? A crocodile-headed cane!” If so, Roger Appleyard is your guy (err, Etsy shop).
For more than 40 years (before Etsy, believe it or not), Roger Appleyard has impressed customers with a unique selection of lamps, outdoor furniture, fine art, pots and vases, books, outdoor items, and general home decor. They have truly one-of-a-kind vintage pieces for your bar, walls, kitchen table, or nearly any other place in the home.
From the common and cheap vintage home decor (wooden shoe molds) to the unusual and expensive (hand-carved wooden Greek busts), Roger Appleyard is a regular yard sale of antiques.
Roger Appleyard’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
The shop is actually owned by Stella and managed by Simi, but that just didn’t have the same ring to it. Joining other eclectic Atlanta thrift stores, this Georgia-based team travels far and wide to personally source unique retro home accessories.
One Kings Lane
One Kings Lane’s Vintage Inspired Home Decor
Price Range: $45–$8,585
One Kings Lane is also a purveyor of vintage home decor ideas, including furniture, rugs, throws, pillows, art and mirrors, lighting, tabletop, fine art, ship bookends, books, and much more.
Vintage dealers—like Vintage Lux, Mike Seratt, Booth & Williams, and De-Cor—are allowed to showcase some of their latest vintage findings on the site, meaning customers get a massive selection of cool vintage decor of all shapes, sizes, and eras.
Some of the more unusual vintage items are their French Poodle Knife Rests. They were recovered from a French country estate and are certain to get tongues wagging at a dinner party. Or shop for more practical items like vintage apothecary bottles for all your DIY zero waste skin care.
One Kings Lane’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
One Kings Lane is one of the best vintage home decor websites, if for no other reason than it’s a compilation of many other retro home decor stores. Consider utilizing their expert free design services to perfectly craft the room of your dreams.
Etsy Vintage
Etsy’s Retro Home Decor
Price Range: Various
Whatever you want, Etsy will invariably have it. This ethical alternative to Amazon gives you the unmatched ability to support small, sustainably-minded sellers located all over the world.
When you’re looking for vintage home decor ideas, Etsy delivers an almost endless influx of new designs and shops.
You’ll find everything from a retro Olympia Splendid typewriter with keys that have been tweaked to make it more compatible with the QWERTY keyboard layout to a pile of vintage vinyl records suitable for decorating the wall of a music room.
Etsy’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Thanks to Etsy’s dedicated support of carbon offset programs, anything sold on Etsy (including from any of the Etsy-based vintage home decor shops mentioned above) comes with carbon-neutral shipping at no cost to you or the sellers.
Etsy as a whole has a number of charitable initiatives, like their Uplift Fund, which supports nonprofits working to “dismantle barriers to entrepreneurship to disenfranchised groups.
eBay
eBay’s Vintage Home Decor
Price Range: Various
eBay is an online marketplace of millions of independent sellers helping to extend the life of products through the resale of pre-owned items and refurbished products. You can search eBay for virtually anything you want.
But if it’s retro vintage home decor items you’re after, simply type this in the eBay search feature, then further filter your results by material, style, shape, condition, subject, and type. Choose from an overwhelming amount of movie posters, vintage china tea cake stands, lanterns, vintage paper umbrellas, glass plates, and more.
eBay’s Ethical & Sustainability Practices
Other than being one of our favorite online thrift stores for anything and literally everything, eBay doesn’t have any other notable eco achievements to speak of.
But they did revolutionize and create amazing access to the ability to rehome unwanted goods, which we’d venture to say has saved a LOT of landfill waste over eBay’s nearly 30 years of business.
Jenny is a UK-based sustainability writer and tea-drinker extraordinaire who has a Masters in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh. Her travels have taken her to organic permaculture farms in the UK and Nepal but you’ll mostly find her working on the veg patch with a garden fork in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Jenny writes for ethical brands and purpose-powered publications on a broad range of sustainable living and conscious consumerism topics. She is passionate about organic and regenerative farming, nature reconnection, and the small things we can do each day to better care for our planet.
