A room Pearl Girls decorated with a masculine flair.  Headboard was custom made to go with the the bedspread with different color leather strips.

  Another room decorated by Pearl Girls

Vintage, Shabby chic, antique, distressed... all are all terms used to describe a decorating or interior design style where furnishings and accessories are selected for their age appearance, age, and signs of "distress" where  the furnishings are purposely worn to achieve an "aged" effect of an antique.

Shabby chic items are often heavily painted with many layers showing through obviously worn areas. Another technique in creating an aged look is sometimes done in faux painting using glaze or by painting then rubbing and sanding away the top coat to show the wood or base coats. Other times, a simple "color wash" technique is used or "milk paint" is applied to the furniture.

Fabrics tend to be cottons and linens, with linen being particularly popular, inspired by old French linens. Whites and worn or bleached out pastels are favorite colours. Fabric is often stained with tea to give it the look of old fabric. Bleached and faded are terms often applied to the style.

The focus of shabby chic style is vintage with antique furniture painted white (or another soft pastel color) and distressed at the corners by sanding.

The most popular decor items are pillows made of vintage burlap cloth fabric, vintage linens, chenille bedspreads, vintage chandeliers, and anything that seemed aged. It is a soft, relaxed feminine romantic way of decorating that looks comfortable and inviting. Also called cottage style.

Shabby Chic started by the British to evoke the type of decoration found in large country houses where there are worn and faded old chintz sofas and curtains, old paintwork and unassuming 'good' taste.   It is an unassuming or quiet elegance. The objective of Shabby Chick is to achieve an elegant overall effect, as opposed to the baroque or over the top Victorian decor.

Recycling old furniture and fabrics is an important aspect of the vintage look and was especially popular with modern Bohemians and artisans. The original shabby chic interiors were usually considered in themselves works of art.

Shabby Chick was coined by The World of Interiors magazine in the 1980s and became extremely popular in the US in the '90s with a certain eclectic surge of decorating styles with paints and effects, notably in metropolitan cultural centres on the West Coast of America, such as LA and San Francisco.  There is a heavy influences from Mediterranean cultures such as Provence, Tuscany and Greece.  Pearl Girls can obtain distressed antique shutters for your decor obtained from these areas.

Pearl Girls Shop offers discovered Coastal Treasures along antique shops, estate sales and overseas connections.  Pearl Girls also offers certain furniture lines that combines Coastal Living with a Vintage Cottage Flair; such as Seabrook Classics.  Most of those items are not on the E-Commerce website but you can ask us specifically what you are looking for.