A Peaky Blinders Inspired Room with Frith Rugs
By order of the Peaky Blinders……….
When Frith rugs contacted me about a campaign they are working on-styling rugs around a “Nab the Netflix Look theme”-think along the lines of Peaky Blinders, The Crown and Stranger Things-I was intrigued. The campaign seemed perfectly fitting for me as at this time of year there is nothing better to do than hunker down with a good Netflix series, hot chocolate or red wine and a roaring fire. I also realised that there is a trend where these series or others like them are inspiring our interior decor.
Frith Rugs thought my home would fit well with Peaky Blinders and at first, I thought huh? I don’t have a home anything like Armley Hall, the home of Tommy Shelby. But then, I figured it was a great excuse to re-watch the series again and pay particularly close attention to the decor and I soon realised that my home has many similarities to the decor used in Peaky Blinders, not to mention that my love of a vintage finds meant that I actually had a lot of the props found in the series: a vintage typewriter, an oil painting, a penchant for anything fringed (lampshades and poufs), open fires, bold patterned wallpaper, vintage linens and candlesticks.
I knew then that it would be so much fun to pull all of this together to create my version of a Peaky Blinders Home.
Peaky Blinders is an award winning, hugely popular Netflix series. There can’t be many of you who aren’t aware of this post war series set in Birmingham. The dark and brooding world of Tommy Shelby is set with an undercurrent of danger and back street brutality and is all topped off with rugged, wild men in flat caps. The decor on set gets increasingly more flamboyant and decadent as you move through the series.
Industrial meets Art Deco meets Classical British decor is the name of the style game. Dark, atmospheric lighting creates cosy and enticing scenes and it is easy to take elements of this and put them in your home today, in fact many of us already have these elements.
Dark and Moody atmospheric colours set with a rich opulent rug, soft furnishings and many layers of textures create a rich and elegant look in this style. Walls are navy, dark grey, deep green or even deep red, richly wallpapered or even panelled. Furnishings come in jewelled coloured velvet, wool, rich brown leather alongside sheepskins or faux furs. Fringed lampshades, poufs and cushions add to the look and dark corners are lifted with pops of colour; red against blue for example.
I’m going to show you throughout this blog post how I created this look, and the rug I chose to style around. You can shop the Frith Rugs specially created Shelby Collection here.
I chose to style my dining room as the wallpaper I have in here fits this era perfectly. The walls are deep navy and the wooden flooring and shuttered and softly curtained windows provide the perfect backdrop to creating my Peaky Blinder room.
I wanted to choose a deep and dark rug that would complement and “pop” against the blue and so I went for a deep, rich red, traditional wool rug from their Persian/Afghan collection, which you can shop here. The rug is over 9ft by 7ft as this room is large and I wanted it to feel more like a large luxurious carpet than a rug in the centre of the room; an opulent rich feel underfoot.
In these images, you can see I have styled my fireplace in an art deco style; a gold fringed fireplace garland, deep and richly coloured flowers and pampas grass-part of art deco floral arrangements. A vintage oil painting, clock and candlesticks finish off the mantelpiece while pink, art deco style lampshades, a fringed pouf, and a vintage gold trolley with an old-style telephone, completes the look.
And as you can see, I decided to dress up in vintage style clothes to go along with my room set and Alfie, my youngest son, decided that he wanted in on the act too. His brooding gangster look fits perfectly, don’t you think?
I wanted to show you how to create a table for afternoon tea, as although we often see the Shelby family drinking copious amounts of whiskey; Irish of course, you do occasionally find them drinking tea from a china tea set.
Afternoon tea was also the setting for Tommy Shelby to admit to Inspector Campbell that he had secretly stashed away the guns he was searching for, in Series One. One of many clashes between the pair.
Here, soft lighting from fringed lampshades gives the room a cosy vibe. The table is covered in ruffled linen and white and gold china are set with vintage linen napkins. A floral display graces the centre of the table, alongside a glass cake stand. In the image above you can also see soft candlelight and a whiskey decanter and glass because there is barely a scene in Peaky Blinders that does not feature one, or someone drinking from one.
Fringed palms create the look of the many decadent hotels visited by the Shelby family, such as Tommy Shelby dining with the Russians.
The Shelby Family work hard, often illegally, but hard nonetheless and in the next set of images you will see how I have created a workstation in 1920’s style.
A vintage typewriter sits alongside leather bound notebooks, used to capture a day’s betting on the horses. A vintage industrial candle helps light the table in addition to the fringed lamps. A traditional bobbin of string and scissors, ever present to bind together large wads of cash, or in the case of Tommy Shelby, another weapon on hand to carry out his violent deeds.
And of course a large decanter of whiskey and a glass is always present because the Shelby family like whiskey at breakfast, lunch and dinner and always have it on hand to seal a work deal with other gangs, be it the Italians, the Russians, Alfie Solomon’s from Camden Town, or even Winston Churchill.
While I have moved a few props around my house to create these images and my Peaky Blinder home, my rooms do not look vastly different normally. I’m a longstanding fan of fringed lampshades and soft candlelight to mood light a room. Deep opulent rugs, textural furnishing and an abundance of plants and flowers are found here all the time. The only prop I had to go out and search for was the whiskey decanter much to my husband’s delight because he now has an excuse to drink more whiskey. The typewriter and the vintage phone I picked up years ago because I love something different and quirky to create a feature in a room, a talking point or something that has history. Mixing the old with the new is something I wax lyrical on throughout this blog.
It is very easy to pick up many of these items in general and at this time of year adding a little “Peaky Blinders” to your home can make it cosy and warm for Autumn/Winter, even if you only try adding one item that I have shown you today.
This is a sponsored blog post and the rug was kindly gifted to me by Frith Rugs. However, all creative input is my own.
