Steampunk Decor: What Makes a Room Steampunk, Not Just Industrial

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A room cannot be made steampunk by the application of gears. It can be made steampunk by a plan, and the plan is simpler than the catalogues suggest: choose a dark and warm palette, expose a mechanism or two, put brass where the eye falls, and keep something recognizably Victorian underneath. The reader new to the style may wish first to read what steampunk is, of which this page is the household branch. What follows is the test for the style, the elements that carry it, a short walk through the rooms of a house, and a few places where the look has been done well in public.

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The Outfitters' Catalogue

Everything named in this guide, by budget

AllThriftyMid-rangeHeirloom

Fig. 1Thrifty

Vintage-style world map print

Maps and nautical charts supply the travel theme for the price of a frame.

See it

Fig. 2Thrifty

Edison filament bulbs

The bare, warm bulb that every caged fixture is built to show.

See it

Fig. 3Thrifty

Brass-finish gear bookends

Gears on a shelf: a small gesture, soon made.

See it

Fig. 4Mid-range

Gear skeleton wall clock

A clock whose movement is part of the face.

See it

Fig. 5Mid-range

Pipe lamp kit

Black-iron fittings and a complete socket and cord set, for a lamp of one's own.

See it

Fig. 6Mid-range

Caged pendant light

A metal cage around an exposed bulb; the room's chief fixture.

See it

Fig. 7Heirloom

Floor globe on a metal stand

A large globe on a metal stand; the traveler's piece, kept for decades.

See it

Fig. 8Heirloom

Leather armchair with brass rivets

The heavy leather seat the design press names first.

See it

I.Steampunk, Industrial or Neo-Victorian?

The three are neighbors, and the distinction repays a moment’s thought.

• Industrial supplies raw features: exposed pipe, brick or concrete, metal, unfinished surfaces.
• Victorian supplies soft vintage elements: ornate accessories, lace and classic styling.
• Steampunk blends the two around invention and exploration, shows its mechanisms openly, and adds travel or nautical motifs.

Our own rule of thumb follows from the design press. If the room hides its workings and has no Victorian layer, it is industrial. If it has Victorian furniture and no visible mechanism, it is neo-Victorian, which is how an essay for the dealer 1stdibs classes the whole steampunk movement, since it builds on Victorian design and joins it to the new. If the mechanism sits inside a Victorian frame, it is steampunk. A second Houzz article gives the practical corollary: keep the Victorian details, the dado rails and wainscoting, and let brass and pipe do the industrial work.

The same authorities warn against strictness. The 1stdibs essay observes that steampunk interiors vary widely, from a stately drawing room to a mad scientist’s lair, because every designer makes a different mixture; Houzz offers its list as a mix, not as rules. We would counsel a single scheme throughout: the Homestyler guide advises one unified color scheme and a beginning in small swaps, namely light fixtures and accessories, with wall art made from gears and furnishings sought at flea markets.

II.The Palette and the Materials

Houzz gives a base of black, dark brown, bottle green, blood red, burnt orange and dark blue, with sepia, cream and soft grey as lighter accents, and a nautical variant in creamy white and sea blue. A Singapore edition of the same magazine suggests brown, cream, sepia and black, with deep red or British racing green in high gloss as accents, and advises white or grey walls in place of dark ones where dado rails and wainscoting are kept. Homestyler favors deep greens, browns and golds. The agreement is substantial: dark, warm and a little theatrical.

For materials Houzz lists steel, copper, iron, bronze and brass; salvaged wood and distressed metal; leather; and, as soft counterpoints, drapes, lace cushions and silk. Exposed pipes, brick and concrete are the industrial half. The full account of materials and colors lives in the steampunk aesthetic.

III.Lighting: The Signature of the Room

If the reader can afford one change, let it be the light. Houzz names salvaged metal lamps with uncovered Edison bulbs, a wall fixture of steel pipes with valve switches, vintage glass chandeliers on dark iron frames, and a caged-lantern floor lamp on a pulley. The 1stdibs essay adds factory fixtures, brass fittings and Bakelite switches, and quotes the designer Stephen Shadley on factory-style lighting: “form follows function almost completely”.

Three pieces in the catalogue serve here. A caged pendant light is the room’s chief fixture; its cage frames the bulb and a bulb in a cage is the effect. The bulbs themselves are Edison filament bulbs, whose warm tone is the other half of the effect. One caution on brightness: a blogger who built cage lights found that 40-watt bulbs gave little light and planned to switch to 60-watt ones. We cannot give a lumen figure with a source, but the lesson holds, and the sensible course is to read the lumens on the box, not the watts, and to add a second lamp at reading height.

A pipe lamp kit is the cheapest way to own a handsome lamp that is also of your own making. A blogger’s 2015 account puts home-made cage sconces at about $22 each, against $150 or more for ready-made ones; the figure is a decade old and is a measure of proportion, not a price list. Buy a kit that includes the socket, cord and strain relief as a set, and have an electrician look at anything wired into a wall. The full account of lamps and of what a safety listing means is in steampunk lamps, and of bulbs and fixtures in Edison bulbs and steampunk light fixtures.

IV.Clocks, Globes and Maps

Houzz names grandfather clocks with exposed gears, antique globes, typewriters, barometers, telescopes and gear bookends among the accessories, and vintage world-map wallpaper, gear-patterned wallpaper, sepia photographs, technical drawings and nautical maps for the walls. A Singapore piece adds small gear-themed wall art.

A gear skeleton wall clock puts the movement on view, and so illustrates the principle better than any other single object; steampunk wall clocks at three budgets compares them. A vintage-style world map print is the least expensive way to bring in the theme of travel, and the guide to steampunk art and wall art takes up patent prints, maps and artists. For the heirloom end there is the floor globe on a metal stand, which has the further merit of being useful. The reader whose taste runs to specimens, jars and glass domes will find that collecting habit in a cabinet of curiosities at home.

V.Furniture

Houzz names heavy or vintage leather sofas and armchairs, with a leather armchair with brass rivets as its example, distressed metal desks, a repurposed-wood center table on cast-iron casters, antique iron bar stools, and vintage leather trunks with straps. Its Singapore sister adds stools of pipe and recycled wood and old trunks used as coffee or side tables. A leather armchair is the piece in the catalogue to buy once, and slowly; the trunk, being found rather than bought, is the thriftier route.

For the common problem of what to put in a room already furnished, small things suffice: a pair of brass-finish gear bookends, a typewriter, a barometer. Nothing here need be expensive, and everything may be added by degrees. A full treatment of the principal room is in a steampunk living room.

VI.Building the Room in Stages

The wise course, and the one the guides agree upon, is gradual. Homestyler advises beginning with the small swaps and moving outward; we would put the order as follows.

1. The light. Replace one fixture or add one lamp, so that a bulb is on view. The room changes more than the expense would suggest.
2. The walls. A map, a technical drawing or a gear-themed piece, hung in a dark frame. Houzz lists world-map and gear-patterned wallpaper, sepia photographs, vintage botanicals and nautical maps among the options, and a print costs far less than a roll of paper.
3. The shelf. Two or three objects of the traveler’s kind: a globe, a barometer, a telescope, a pair of bookends. Houzz’s own list of accessories includes antique globes, typewriters, barometers and telescopes.
4. The seat. Only when the rest has settled should the large purchase be made. A room that has acquired its character by degrees will tell the buyer what it lacks.

The reader will notice that nothing in this order requires the walls to be repainted. That is deliberate: the Houzz Singapore article, indeed, recommends white or grey walls over dark ones where the Victorian details are kept, and a rented room can follow the same counsel.

On Not Overdoing It

Steampunk decor is the easiest style to overdo, since every surface offers a place for another gear. The design press itself cautions that the style is a mix rather than a recipe, and that interiors vary widely. Our suggestion is a rule of three: three metals at most (brass, copper and iron serve), three colors (a dark base, a deep accent and a pale relief), and one visible mechanism for each room, whether a clock, a gauge or a bare-bulb fixture. A room built to that rule will look composed, which is the thing the style most often lacks.

VII.Three Budgets

The catalogue sorts its pieces by budget; the table says what each tier is for. We state no prices, since retailers’ prices change.

VIII.Room by Room

Bathroom. The trade-off is plain. A British supplier, Drench, advises leaving brass and copper plumbing exposed, notes that concealed pipework is the fashion but that the style works best with everything on view, recommends a plumber who can bend pipe and plan the layout, and observes that copper’s patina absorbs scratches; it also mentions a high-level toilet with a chain. Houzz pictures polished copper pipes against black tile and a beaten-copper sink. See the steampunk bathroom.

Bedroom. The design press supplies no bedroom guide of its own; the general rules (dark base, brass, leather and velvet) carry over. The longer treatment is steampunk bedroom ideas.

Kitchen. A Singapore Houzz piece pairs industrial elements with open shelving and subway tiles; steampunk kitchen ideas takes up the rest.

Desk and computer. Datamancer, the California maker, built mechanical keyboards in wood, aluminum and brass, with typewriter keycaps, which Core77 reported at $550 to $1,300; the same report says it was unclear whether the firm still fulfilled orders, and that the founder had died in 2013. Readers should confirm stock before counting on one. The maker Billet Labs built a wall-mounted water-cooled computer with custom brass and copper plumbing, an analog temperature gauge on the graphics card and a pressure gauge on the loop. See a steampunk desk and steampunk PC cases and keyboards.

Bar. A basement bar in Seattle, designed by Cathy Briskorn of Albee Interior Design, has black-painted raised-panel cabinets with brass pulls, an island top of flame-hammered copper, a copper sink with an oil-rubbed bronze faucet, and a riveted galvanized ceiling made with nickel furniture nails to resemble an early airplane wing. Our guide is a steampunk home bar.

Outdoors and the calendar. The garden is covered in steampunk garden ideas; the seasons in steampunk Halloween decorations and steampunk Christmas ornaments and trees.

IX.Where to See It Done

Three public rooms are documented. Mr. Fogg, a bar in Zagreb, takes its theme from Jules Verne. Truth Coffee in Cape Town was designed by Haldane Martin as a steampunk-inspired headquarters. The lobby of The Mandrake hotel in London is described by a magazine reviewer as including taxidermy displays among its decor. A visit costs less than a renovation, and instructs as well.

X.A Word on Safety

Two parts of this subject call for a professional. Wiring that goes into a wall, including a pendant light fixed to a ceiling box, belongs to an electrician. Exposed plumbing belongs to a plumber, as Drench is at pains to say. A lamp assembled from a complete kit is a different matter, provided the parts are sold together and are used as the maker directs.

XI.A Note on the Catalogue

The eight plates above are product types, not endorsements of a particular brand, and each leads to a plain search at Amazon, where the reader may compare what is on offer at the time. Some of the links earn the Gazette a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to the reader. We have not handled these goods, and we state neither prices nor ratings; the reader is advised to look for a clear description of materials, a stated size, and, for anything that plugs in, the maker’s instructions and safety markings. Handmade pieces, which suit the heirloom end of the budget, are also made and sold by individual makers, and the guides in this section say where we have found them worth a look.

XII.Guides in This Section

• Steampunk lamps: pipe lamps, kits and what a UL listing means
• Steampunk wall clocks at three budgets
• Edison bulbs and steampunk light fixtures
• A steampunk living room
• Steampunk bedroom ideas
• The steampunk bathroom: exposed copper and brass
• Steampunk kitchen ideas
• A steampunk desk
• Steampunk PC cases and keyboards
• Steampunk art and wall art
• A cabinet of curiosities at home
• A steampunk home bar
• Steampunk garden ideas
• Steampunk Halloween decorations
• Steampunk Christmas ornaments and trees

XIII.Frequently Asked Questions

What is steampunk decor?

Victorian furnishings and surfaces combined with industrial materials and visible mechanisms, under a theme of invention and travel. Gears, gauges, brass and copper are the usual signs.

What is the difference between steampunk and industrial decor?

Industrial decor supplies raw metal, pipe and unfinished surfaces; steampunk adds the Victorian layer and shows mechanisms openly.

What colors are used in steampunk decor?

A base of black, dark brown, bottle green, blood red, burnt orange or dark blue, with sepia, cream and soft grey as accents and metals to finish.

How do I start decorating in the steampunk style?

Begin with small changes, such as light fixtures and accessories, and keep to one color scheme. A single lamp or clock will show whether the style suits the room.

Is steampunk the same as neo-Victorian?

Not quite. An essay on 1stdibs calls steampunk a neo-Victorian movement because it builds on Victorian design; a room with Victorian furniture and no visible mechanism is neo-Victorian only.

Can I make a steampunk lamp myself?

Yes, from a kit. Buy the socket, cord and strain relief as a set and have an electrician check anything wired into the wall; see steampunk lamps.

Sources