Creating my own Harry Potter themed room that works for both children and adults was a lot of fun, and the results are in.
Approach: recreate an authentic feeling of the book/movies and go light on branded merch.
Timeline: two months.
Shopped at:
- Estate sales and auctions
- Antique stores
- Charity auctions (shopgooddwill.com, etc)
- Ebay
- Retail stores like Pottery Barn Teen and At Home
My Design Approach
I wanted to replicate the same feeling of old-time magic you get from the movie sets and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando.
While there is a lot of branded Harry Potter merchandise for sale at retailers, most of my décor choices were original vintage and antique finds that came with authenticity and a low price tag.
I sourced most items from the local antique stores and estate auctions, and I highly recommend it because it’s lots of fun.
Products sharing the same aesthetic: Owl figurine, globe, horn, trunk.
Start with Fixed Elements of the Room
I was sipping a butterbeer at the Hog’s Head in Hogsmead in Orlando, when I realized that the Harry Potter theme will work wonders for our basement, which had the distinctive English pub style: dark wood paneling, textured sheetrock, and wood-imitation floors.
Thus was born the Hogwarts-themed lounge project.
When creating your Harry Potter themed space, you should pay attention to the fixed elements of your room, such as flooring, wall color, light fixtures, and wall and ceiling embellishments.
While it’s important to downplay modern elements that may go against the sorcery aesthetic, in most cases, there is no need to change them. You can cover wall to wall carpet with an oriental rug and hang tapestries and paintings in gilded frames to evoke Hogwarts without finishing your walls in stone veneer. For more, read about my experience on how to create a Slytherin room without paining the walls green.
Furniture
Gryffindor and Slytherin common rooms were the main inspirations for the lounge. This is the room where students can hang out and do homework. It needed a comfy sitting area, a desk, and a place to display educational materials and prized possessions.
What to look for when shopping for Harry Potter style furniture:
- Materials: wood, metal. Most furniture should be made of wood, and metal accents are acceptable if they fit with the style.
- Wood tone: medium brown to black. Dark wood tones, such as walnut and espresso are preferred.
- Furniture style: traditional, either simple (handmade-like) or more refined. Chunky styles are preferred.
- Hardware: pewter or bronze. Stay away from shiny finishes, like polished chrome.
Products sharing the same aesthetic: desk, chair, candelabra, magnifying glass, quill, goblet, clock.
Since our basement lacks a fireplace, a big desk with a hutch shelf serves as a focal point. I got the desk for a song at an estate auction because very few people can arrange the loading and transport of a heavy item overnight. My own and my best friend’s husbands get my eternal gratitude for moving the desk.
The hutch has a place to display all the odd accessories found in wizards’ homes: old books, early 1900s film projector ($20 at an antique mall), mantle clock ($8 at an estate auction), framed postcards bought at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, vintage magnifying glasses ($20 at shopgoodwill.com), candelabra spray-painted black, and a glass globe (Ebay).
Products that would look good in this room: chair, coffee table, tray, metal vase, candelabra, glass jars.
The seating is comfy but mismatched just like you see in the Gryffindor common room. Most of the pieces came from a local estate online auction and estate sales and were under $50 apiece.
Upholstered Furniture
If your room includes a seating area, you need to choose upholstered pieces, the question of color comes into play. Here are some directions you can go:
- Match the color of your Hogwarts house. Don’t worry about mixing and matching different tones of the same color. It makes the room look more lived in and authentic.
- Choose black or dark brown leather. Black leather is the material of choice for Slytherin, but it looks good in any sorcery themed spaces, from Borgin and Burkes stores to Grimmauld Place.
- Consider whether you can get away with all wood pieces. This is not a good choice for a couch, but could work very well in a dining room.
Items with similar aesthetic: chair, side table, lamp, gilded frame.
Black leather chairs and sofas create an sophisticated room, full of dark mystery.
Items with similar aesthetic: chair, side table, chess set, gilded frame.
Trunks
Trunks mean Harry Potter, and Harry Potter means trunks. Trunks are essential to the space.
Use them for display or as side/coffee tables. Store your magical artifacts in them.
There is no need to buy trunks new. Old trunks can be painted to match your Hogwarts house or left as is.
I purchased two old trunks at an estate auction, cleaned them out, and spray painted them black to create a display area.
Products sharing the same aesthetic: Owl figurine, globe, horn, trunk.
Décor
To stay consistent with the Harry Potter and Hogwarts theme, the accessories need to reflect technologies, materials, and types of items used in 1800-early 1900. Glass, metal (brass, bronze, tin), wood, ceramics, horn, feathers/quills, all of these were featured prominently in the movies.
Harry Potter décor pieces to look for:
- Animal figurines, including brass statues
- Horns
- Magnifying glass
- Chrystal balls, aka divination orbs
- Candelabras and gas style lamps
- Old books
- Containers, from brass vessels to carved trinket boxes to glass display/storage
- Globes and armillary spheres
- Metal tools, scales, old-school gadgets (cameras, projectors), instruments
Accessories that refer to the natural world, like plants and animals were also common.
I go into detail and show examples of great decorative accessories in this article.
Products sharing the same aesthetic: desk, quill, glass orb, projector, glass jar.
Wall Décor
These types of wall décor can be used to create an authentic Hogwarts atmosphere:
- Wall covering, like wallpaper or tapestries (lady and the Unicorn or Hunt for the Unicorn if you want to stay extra authentic).
- Paintings in gilded frames.
- Greenery. Several places in the castle used vines and plants for décor, including the Slytherin and Hufflepuff common rooms.
- Old educational materials, particularly about the natural sciences: astronomy, biology, etc.
- Mirrors, including mirror of Erised and cloudy old mirrors in the Slytherin common room.
- Branded merch, like The Daily Prophet posters and Platform 9 and 3/4 signs, which I would keep to a minimum.
I chose two types of art in the lounge: old natural history prints and paintings. The prints were inspired by the Defense Against the Dark Art classroom in Hogwarts Castle, as re-created in the Wizarding World in Orlando (where I spent good 30 minutes sitting on the floor waiting for the ride to re-open – and you bet I loved every minute of it), and the paintings were a direct reference to the halls and common rooms of Hogwarts.
This article gives you ideas on how you can create your own DIY natural history posters worthy of your Harry Potter room.
Obviously, the wizarding prints would not show beautiful flowers and birds of paradise, rather, they would boast the plants and the animals that have magical powers or produce poisons. Fortunately, you can buy original antique prints of snakes, spiders, and worms inexpensively on Ebay.
To make reproductions of classical artwork similar to that of Hogwarts, all you need is a vintage gilded frame and an old masters’ art print, which you can order using downloads from copyright-free archives, like the National Gallery of Art. I found that the cheapest place to order large-format prints was Walmart.
Light Fixtures
Hogwarts light fixtures deserve their own discussion because the designers of the movie set used oil and kerosene lamps which are rare today. While I see many flowery “gone with the wind” lamps on the antiques market, the more simple designs with A-shaped brass or round glass shades are few and far between.
Since I have not seen replicas of these lamps at retail stores, your best bet is still with local antique malls and estate sales.
Floors
Hogwarts castle had stone and wood floors, and large worn-out oriental rugs were covering both Gryffindor and Slytherin common rooms. Fortunately, you don’t need to get a degree in buying and cleaning antique rugs because very decent imitations are available inexpensively.
I skipped getting a rug for my room because of its basement location, however, here is an example of something you can order from Wayfair that would look gorgeous in a Harry Potter inspired space:
Creating your own spin on the famed Hogwarts interior is a fun project for both grown-ups and kids. Come armed with a good eye for odd antiques, cleaning supplies, and creativity, and you will have your own Harry Potter themed room in no time.
If you liked my idea, check out my ideas inspired by the Gryffindor and the Slytherin common rooms. I photographed vignettes to illustrate how the decor might look in your own room.