How Modern Can You Go in a Historic Home?

There's a moment in every historic project where you have to decide whether you're restoring a house or designing one. We hit ours in a dining room, standing in front of a roll of wallpaper.

For just a moment, I was like — is this too modern?

It wasn't. But the question is worth sitting with, because the answer isn't the same in every room.

Start by finding what's already there

There were small pieces of charm here already that are usually hidden by bad paint jobs. That's the reality of most historic houses — the good bones are present, buried under decades of well-meaning updates.

Everything in this home was architecturally already there. Our job was to add beautiful elements that highlighted it, not to invent character the house didn't have.

Where we pushed modern

Bouclé in the living room. We love bouclé. We chose it because it adds a modern touch subtly, without shouting about it — which is exactly the register you want against period millwork.

Bold wallpaper in the dining room. In other spaces we'd gone more traditional with William Morris prints. But this paper had nature and animals in it, so it felt like a nod to classical decorative themes even while being contemporary. That gave us room to stretch the boundaries a little — to be a little braver.

Contemporary furniture against carved moulding. The dining room is wrapped in hand-carved moulding, so it needed modern pieces to counter it. Gray velvet chairs, a cerused oak table. Without that counterweight the room reads as a period set.

A checkerboard kitchen floor in gray and off-white. The original floors had been too damaged by previous owners, so we had to go with something completely new. Gray and off-white is much softer, and not as bold as black and bright white would have been.

Where we didn't

The primary bedroom is our love letter to the Arts and Crafts era. William Morris wallpaper, motifs drawn from the natural world, nothing fighting the period. Not every room needs to make an argument.

In the kitchen, we really didn't want to show any steel appliances — so the range hood is wrapped in wood, and we carried the same panelling idea onto the back of the island. Modern function, hidden inside the house's own vocabulary.

And in one bathroom, the original wallpaper was too damaged to save. So we saved a square, framed it, and hung it on the wall.

The test we actually use

The home is gorgeous. She's a craftsy girl, and we wanted to honor that in every way we could. That's the filter — not "is this modern enough" or "is this period-correct," but whether a choice makes the house more itself.

It's meant to be that you walk in and just feel cozy, like you're at home.

See the full project at The Craft House Inn, or read How to Decorate an Old Home for the broader approach.

XO - The HHI Team

Includes commentary Hearth Homes Interiors provided to Homes & Gardens, January 2026.