Eclectic style is really just permission (as if you needed it) to fill your home with things you love. Here’s how lighting can help your own good taste shine…
Eclectic style sounds like an interiors category, but really it is something much more human than that. It is what happens when you trust your own eye: when you buy the lamp because you love it, or keep that chair because it reminds you of someone, or hang the painting because it makes you happy every day.
In other words, eclectic style is not something you need to decide to “do”, as though embarking on a strict new decorative regime involving three patterns, two time periods and one artistically significant vase. It is often what interesting homes become naturally, over time, when people are brave enough to choose things for reasons other than perfect coordination.
At its best, an eclectic interior feels beautifully thrown together: a little old, a little new, a little polished, a little peculiar. It might include a treasured painting, a modern sofa, a vintage chair, a patterned lampshade, a lovely wooden lamp base, a striped cushion, something inherited, something rescued, something bought on impulse for an indefensible sum…
The result should feel personal. It definitely doesn’t have to be perfect. It should feel as if everything has been collected over time, as though the room has grown around the people who live in it.
And this is where lighting comes into its own. Lamps, shades, pendants and wall lights are brilliant tools for the eclectic stylist, because they let you mix colour, pattern, shape, texture and period in a way that feels joyful but manageable. A lampshade can introduce a new print. A lamp base can bring a flash of colour. A wall light can add polish to a busy corner. A pendant can give the whole room a little lift.
Lighting is not there to make your home “qualify” as eclectic. It is simply one of the loveliest ways to show your own taste.
What is eclectic lighting?
Eclectic lighting is not one particular look, but an attitude: a way of combining things you like.
It might be a ceramic lamp with a patterned shade, a traditional wall light in a contemporary hallway, a glossy glass base beside an old, battered table, a hand-turned wooden lamp in a modern bedroom, a brass pendant over a rustic dining table, or a striking rechargeable lamp sitting cleverly on a bookshelf.
The point is not that everything matches. In fact, if everything matches too neatly, the eclectic spirit starts fading away. What matters is that the pieces feel somehow connected by the fact that they all belong to your particular way of seeing the world.
So eclectic style is not random. It’s not about just tipping the contents of an antiques fair into the sitting room and hoping for the best. It is more personal than that, and more instinctive. It is about giving the things you love enough room to speak to one another (if that doesn’t sound too bonkers).
Start with what you love
The best eclectic rooms usually begin with… affection. Love, even. So before worrying about whether a lamp “goes”, ask a better question: do you love it? Does it make the room feel warmer, livelier, prettier, stranger, calmer, sharper or more complete? Does it bring something the room was missing? Does it make you slightly pleased every time you walk past it?
That is not a bad design test.
Lighting is especially good for this because it can be expressive without taking over the whole room. You might not want an entire sofa in a bold print, but a patterned lampshade? Much easier. You might hesitate over a bright wall colour, but a coloured lamp base can give you just enough of the same thrill. You might not want to commit to a grand decorative scheme, but a curious little lamp on a side table can make a corner feel instantly more interesting.
Eclectic style is built from these little, confident decisions and choices.
Find the thread
Of course, “I love it” is a splendid starting point, but a room still needs to hold together. Otherwise it can begin to look less like an expression of personal taste and more like the lost property office of a highly artistic railway station.
The trick with eclectic interiors is to find a thread running through the variety. That thread might be colour. It might be material. It might be a repeating shape. It might be a general mood: warm and worldly, fresh and playful, grand and eccentric, calm but collected.
Lighting can help really create that thread.
You might repeat brass finishes across a wall light, table lamp and pendant. You might use several different lampshades, but keep them all within a similar palette. You might mix ceramic, glass and metal bases, but choose shapes with the same pleasing roundness. Or you might let one colour pop up in different places: a blue lamp, a blue detail in a shade, a blue line in a rug, a blue spine on a book…
Nothing has to match exactly. In fact, please don’t make it match exactly.
Mix old and new
Eclectic style loves a time traveller.
A room becomes much more interesting when different periods are allowed to rub along together, like contemporary lamps on antique tables or a modern sofa beside a pleated shade. A traditional wall light in a crisp new bathroom can look splendid. There is real pleasure in the friction.
Lighting is one of the easiest ways to make that old-new mix work. If a room is full of older pieces, a sharper lamp can stop it feeling too dusty. If a room is very contemporary, a decorative shade or classic brass wall light can give it warmth and depth. If a room is somewhere in the middle, which most real rooms are, lighting can help bridge the gap.
Let all your pieces sit together and talk… they may get on better than you expected.
Be brave with lampshades
Lampshades are definitely the natural allies of eclectic style.
They are decorative, changeable and wonderfully expressive. A shade can bring in pattern, colour, texture, pleats, scallops, stripes, florals, ikats, block prints, neat little motifs or something much bolder. And because it is smaller than a curtain, rug or wall, you can afford to be a bit braver.
This is a good place to experiment. Try the shade you don’t think will work, or put the pattern beside the other pattern.
You may also be horrified, in which case simply try another one. (This is the great advantage of lampshades over wallpaper…)
Layer the lighting
Eclectic rooms are usually full of detail, and detail needs layered light.
One overhead light tends to flatten everything, making all your carefully gathered treasures look as though they are waiting for a dental appointment. Much better to create light at different heights: table lamps, floor lamps, wall lights, pendants, picture lights… Also, rechargeable lamps tucked into places where no electrician was thoughtful enough to put a socket.
This gives the room atmosphere, but it also lets different parts of the room have their own moment. (A lamp beside an armchair says: sit here; while a pendant above a table says: gather round!) Layered lighting lets the room reveal itself gradually, all the better in an eclectic home.
Give odd corners a job
Every home has odd corners, and an eclectic home positively celebrates them.
If you have a narrow console table in the hallway, a funny little shelf at the end of a landing or an alcove that never quite knew what it wanted to be, then a lamp can turn these places into little pockets of character.
Add a small shade, a stack of books, a painting, a plant, a bowl, a strange object from a holiday, and suddenly the corner has a purpose, it becomes part of the story.
(Rechargeable lamps are particularly helpful here, because eclectic style should be freed from the tyranny of plug sockets.)
Don’t over-curate
There is a delicate balance in eclectic style. Too little thought, and the room looks muddled; but too much thought, and it sort of… loses its nerve.
The best eclectic rooms have a bit of looseness about them; they allow for accidents and additions and changes of mind. Lighting should have that same ease. A pair of lamps can be very useful, of course, but not every lamp has to have a twin. You can always change a shade, and the room can evolve.
This is important, because eclectic style is not a finished look so much as an ongoing habit. It is the habit of noticing, choosing, arranging, rearranging… Sometimes you might decide that the thing everyone else dislikes is actually the very thing that makes the room, and that’s fine.
Of course, your inner eclectic stylist knows this already.
Eclectic style is really about making a home that could only belong to you.
The label is just permission to carry on choosing the things you love, putting them where they make sense, and letting your home become a truer expression of your own excellent, eccentric, entirely unrepeatable taste.
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