Can Comic Book-Sci Fi and Vintage Marry?

When my husband I first moved in together his decorating style was more comic book store stockroom while my style looked more like a Gothic antique shoppe exploded all over the house.

We never fought about the differences. We just mixed our things in a giant melting pot. One bookcase in our tiny apartment living room held my gold angels, Greek sculptures, and vampire Gothic. Another held Stormtroopers next to a lighted case my husband build to showcase his life-size vinyl batman cowl.


When we bought our first house, the extra space allowed us to carve out niches to make our own. We began to get "a little more grown-up" in how we display our collections. Later, as life got more complicated, we found that we needed to create a less hectic space to retreat to at the end of the day. We both streamlines our collections, becoming more selective about the pieces we display, choosing quality over quantity.

As we experimented with new things, we discovered decorating styles that merged our styles in more subtle ways than the literal, over-the-top decorating themes we gravitated to in our 20s. Brushed nickel and deco lines make for a lovely marriage of vintage and modern.