It will come as no surprise that with the imminent arrival of the new season of Bridgerton, we have Regency interiors on our minds. The Bridgerton universe is a world of froth and pastel colours, decadent flower arrangements and elaborately lit gardens - very different from, say, the muted world of Colin Firth's Pride and Prejudice back in the 1990s. For this reason, people often ask about how accurate (or inaccurate) interiors of such shows are, but the answer is more complicated than you might expect.
Let's think about a more contemporary example. If someone asked what music was popular in the 1980s, you couldn’t just say ‘Madonna’ and be done with it. You’d have to talk about how and why the likes of Madonna, The Smiths, Metallica, and MC Hammer all somehow occupied the same sphere. A Regency interior was subject to similarly wild diversity. Broadly, we're speaking of the four decades between roughly 1795 and 1837, the years around the official regency of that great tastemaker Prince George. There were plenty of fashions that influenced the interiors of the period: a love of antiquity, the revivals of different eras, new technologies, the divisions of class, and the influence of so many other global cultures (due to the far reach of the East India Company and the tastes of the Prince Regent himself). Additionally, this was a new era of choice, as for the first time, people had access to a handful of interior inspiration publications like Ackermann’s Repository of the Arts—which we like to think was their version of House & Garden—thus adding to the eclectic mix of styles and tastes.
Even if there was such a thing as a predictable ‘Regency interior', there's no reason why this really needs to be reflected wholesale on our screens. While some productions aim for visual authenticity, others aim for something more like ‘Regencycore’—a feeling of Regency in a universe separate from ours. Nonetheless, it's quite fascinating to pick out what feels true and what doesn't, even in the most outlandish, fantastical interiors (cough, Bridgerton). We’ve asked Oxford professor and author of Regency Style Dr. Steven Parissien, Curator of Drawings and Books at Sir John Soane’s Museum Dr Frances Sands, Former Curator of Furniture at the V&A John Hardy, Architectural Historian Oliver Gerrish, and Caroline Percy of Historic Decoration to help us see our Regency favourites through historically accurate glasses.
Let's start with antiquity: educated young men had been undertaking the Grand Tour (a period of travel around the sights of Europe) since the 17th century, and the visual language of the classical world remained a strong source of design inspiration. The form of the inspiration did not remain static, however. Robert Adam, one of the most influential architects and designers of the second half of the 18th century, had pioneered neoclassicism in Britain, taking his ideas from Rome and taking plenty of artistic liberties with the designs he recorded on his grand tour. By the Regency, the more archaeologically accurate foundations of James Stuart were coming to the fore, and he was largely inspired by what he had seen in Greece. According to Dr. Sands, this resulted in a “much more pared-down, attenuated use of antique ornamentation.”
How well is this reflected in TV and film? In the 1995 rendition of Sense and Sensibility—you know, the one with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet—one of the most memorable spaces is the Dashwoods' library in their family home Norland Park. The location was the library at the Adam-designed Saltram House in Devon, a space created somewhat earlier than the Regency, but which nevertheless feels true to the period. A fully authentic Regency space is rare, as the Victorians of the near future didn’t see these spaces as being old enough to preserve and keep. This is why earlier Adam-like rooms tend to be used and depicted in Regency productions rather than actual Regency rooms. However, this room retains a lot of features that are either actually from the Regency period, such as the streamlined fireplace with its Greek triumphal palm motif, or the scagliola columns from the room’s 1780s renovation, which still would have been very much in fashion.
The Long Gallery at Syon House in Chiswick, which was used as part of the Woodhouses' home in the 1996 version of Emma (the Gwyneth Paltrow one), is also a Robert Adam space, and uses colours and motifs traditionally associated with the Regency: light pinks and greens, bows, and feminine swags. Caroline Percy, who grew up at Syon, explained how the third Duchess of Northumberland added the gilding we see today to the plasterwork during the Regency era to give the room visual heft, as white plasterwork was out of fashion and gilding was in. It was absolutely normal for people of the Regency period to hold onto and live within their preexisting spaces—the biggest proof we have of that is that they’re still around today. So it’s completely acceptable for films to use rooms of much earlier eras, like the Double Cube Room at Wilton House, a 17th-century Inigo Jones design, used for the dancing scenes in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility and the court of Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton.
The Emma of 2020 with Anya Taylor-Joy makes an interesting set decision by constructing a great hall at Emma’s family home to look like Robert Adam’s Etruscan dressing room at Osterley Park—a room of the 1760s. If the filmmakers had the budget to create a new room in the first place, why not recreate a true Regency space? Although great halls of the time would in all likelihood have been an austere, stone colour with little decoration, if they were going to have fun with it, we think an Egyptian room would have been much punchier. We're great fans of Thomas Hope, the Regency designer who introduced the term ‘interior decoration’ to the English language, and who was so taken with the world of ancient Egypt that he redesigned the Adam interior of his London house in Egyptian style. Shouldn't he be given more recognition in Regency productions? Funnily enough, Bridgerton (the show with perhaps the loosest interpretation of all things Regency) was the only production we found to use pieces that resemble real-life Thomas Hope furniture, as two pier tables flanking the fireplace in the Featheringtons’ acid green drawing room mimic his pier tables with central Egyptian floral motifs and pairs of caryatids as support.
Speaking of Egypt, in addition to the Grand Tour, Napoleon’s campaigns also served as a great source of inspiration. Description de L’Égypte, a series of multiple publications which depicted Napoleon’s teams’ archeological findings in Egypt, made its way to England and inspired cabinetmakers, porcelain factories, and architects of the time to add an Egyptian twist such as scarabs and sphinxes to their designs. The 2022 version of Persuasion starring Dakota Johnson uses the Cipriani room at Trafalgar Park in Wiltshire, where the Regency furniture in situ is clearly in the Egyptian style with its use of pharaoh figures as ornamentation. Additionally, the 1996 version of Emma features decoration in the campaign spirit: the perimeter of the drawing room at Emma’s family home is covered in drapey, yellow silk supported by horizontal rods at the cornices to resemble Napoleon’s tents. It gives the tented effect; however, the execution misses the mark. According to Dr. Parissien, a tented room would have aimed to look just like a tent, in that it would have covered entire walls and ceilings—and paintings never would have obstructed the silk. The attempt was close, but it was no competition for the likes of Percier & Fontaine or our contemporary Veere Grenney. The Emma of 2020 also channels the ethos of Napoleon’s campaign tents with its copious amounts of striped silks and its immensely structural curtains in the formal dining room at Hartfield, which Dr. Parissien said are “straight out of Ackermann’s Repository.”
Both renditions of Emma show the ways in which English design was inspired by the French and the ancien régime during the Regency period. This taste came about for a few reasons and visually manifested itself in different ways simultaneously. The Prince Regent, the ultimate trendsetter of Regency England, loved all things French and took advantage of the aftermath of the French Revolution by buying the furniture that once belonged to the French elite—something many wealthy English Francophiles did at the time. When he renovated his London residence, Carlton House, under the supervision of architect Henry Holland, he employed French decorators, painters, and marchands-merciers, to give the house a look that was inspired by antiquity. Characterised by straight lines, lozenges, and references to mythology and archaeology within motifs, this look is very much in evidence in the 1996 rendition of Emma, most frequently in the form of chairs and small tables scattered about.
The 2020 version of Emma, meanwhile, runs wild with the rococo look of Louis XV with its curves, bulbous Sèvres-like porcelain, and frothy pastels. The Louis XIV and XV styles became popular after the 1814 restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, and as Emma was written in 1815, this checks out—kind of. While there were rooms done completely in the Louis XV style, most famously the Elizabeth Saloon at Belvoir Castle, this was extremely rare and did not really occur often before the 1820s. The 2020 version of Emma’s approach to Rococo, particularly in the Woodhouses’ drawing room, which was filmed at Firle Place in Sussex, is much more suitable for a suite at the Ritz with its highly Rococo plasterwork and painted reproduction French furniture (the latter of which was brought in for filming). What sort-of saves the room is the inclusion of the authentic English and French pieces, which were already in place. However, one could argue that their mixture and confusion was Regency-like in spirit. According to Frances Collard’s book Regency Furniture, even people of the Regency period confused one Louis with another, often calling Louis XIV “Rococo.” Also, we mustn’t forget, the Emma of 2020 is meant to be a giant dollhouse, as Emma plays with the lives of her friends as a child would play with their dolls. So, with that in mind, the room offers an appropriate dose of whimsy.
Largely due to the growing trade networks of the East India Company and the fact that influential grand tourists such as Thomas Hope were expanding their tours across Asia, the East was a particularly strong influence on the interiors of the Regency period. Perhaps the grandest (and most famous) example of this is the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. Originally a modest, seaside villa, John Nash turned it into a visually explosive cocktail of the Chinese, Islamic and Indian aesthetics—a breath of life into a trend that had faded away with the English Rococo. The Pavilion is an extreme example, of course, and influences from the East were typically implemented in smaller doses. The Emma of 1996 features a dancing scene in the North Hall at Claydon House, which showcases plaster Ho Ho birds and Chinese export vases. While this room is an earlier Rococo invention of the mid eighteenth-century, according to Oliver Gerrish, it would have suited the mood of the Regency’s love for chinoiserie.
Elsewhere, the 2022 version of Persuasion features surprisingly accurate hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper in Anne’s bedroom—much like the kind seen at Belvoir Castle or Temple Newsam (which displays wallpaper actually given to the house by the Prince Regent). In fact, it’s nearly identical to the wallpaper at Houghton Hall, which is said to have been installed in the Cabinet Room in preparation for a visit from the Prince of Wales—later the Prince Regent. Additionally, most interiors in these productions do display chinoiserie pieces here and there, such as japanned tables or faux bamboo chairs and screens, which is a perfectly appropriate nod to Regency period’s love for all things exotic. As for the Aesthetic Movement bamboo fire screen in the Woodhouses’ drawing room in the 2020 rendition of Emma… we are choosing to ignore that.
Both versions of Emma also feature a new sort of space that was incredibly important to the fashionable Regency home—the conservatory—where Emma can be seen spritzing her plants. Often an attached extension of the home, as shown in the films, the conservatory would have been a multi-purpose space. Making use of the new forms of furniture that included wheels, the conservatory could act as a space for reading, drawing, and even enjoying a meal, as furniture could be wheeled in and out of the metal-framed glass structures. Dr. Parissien perfectly describes this new way of using furniture as "blurring the distinction between inside and outside.” Although they would have been enjoyed by the whole family, conservatories also provided a new space for women like Emma to enjoy, as, according to Dr. Parissien, botany was seen as a suitable science for them to engage in. John Hardy, a former Curator of Furniture at the V&A noted that the plants themselves would have been displayed as objets de vertu and status symbols in the same manner as expensive porcelain or furniture, as they would have been shipped from all four corners of the earth—or at least wherever the East India Company was involved. “There was a circular table in the center of rooms in the other parts of the house, which would have a potted plant from the conservatory placed on it every day,” he said. “In the evening,” he continued, “a butler would come in and replace it with the Argand lamp.” The Argand lamp, an oil lamp invented in the late 18th century, was, arguably, the most important technological addition to interiors of this period. Not only did it provide a new source of light, but it completely changed the way furniture was arranged forever. Instead of furniture being placed against the walls, it was brought to the center of the room so that people could read and write into the night. Unless we accidentally fell asleep during our Regency film and television marathon and missed it elsewhere, the 1996 version of Emma is the only production to show the all-important Argand lamp.
Of course, it wasn’t just the wealthy who participated in the new trends and styles. Households of lesser means, too, would adjust their interiors in more affordable ways. For example, in a rendering of a headmaster’s drawing room dating from 1816 kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum, we can see that the seventeenth-century oak panelling has been painted a lighter, brighter, off-white. The room still had furniture from previous decades, but the overall look was modified by the addition of contemporary pieces and fashionable silk and linen slipcovers on their outdated, camelback sofas. In the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley, the Bennets’ drawing room is a good representation of a landed gentry (land wealthy, yet cash poor) family adapting to the tastes in the same way. They, too, have a camelback sofa of decades past, which they chose to cover with a striped linen.
Overall, both the 2005 and the 1995 adaptations of Pride and Prejudice depict the Bennets’ furniture well. In both renditions, there’s hardly any Regency furniture at all, which would have been completely normal for this sort of household at the time. New furniture would have been an unnecessary expense, which is why most of their pieces are from previous decades and even centuries. One also must remember that people of the Regency period were just that—people—with sentimental attachments to things just like we have. So, it would not be unheard of for a family to have kept and proudly displayed granny’s chipped, lacquered cabinet-on-stand or grandpa’s sun-faded, claw-footed Gainsborough chair. However, according to Dr. Parissien, the 2005 version depicts the Bennets’ home perhaps a bit too shabbily from some vantage points, as people of their economic status certainly would have had carpets in all rooms meant for entertaining visitors; like the dining room, which is presented as bare-floored. Additionally, their walls wouldn’t have been covered in layers of soot—the Bennets may have been struggling, but they certainly would have been able to afford staff to clean that! Another wall-related faux pas he noticed was the paint itself, as their panelling is two different shades of blue. “The two tones wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “It would have been one, flat color.” The two tones, he explained, is something a current decorator would do rather than someone of the Regency period.
The Bennets’ home in the 1995 BBC version, however, implements an example of a particular wall treatment that was incredibly popular within and important to the middle class of Regency England: printed wallpaper. This was the first time that wallpaper was accessible to those who didn’t have the biggest budget to allocate toward more extravagant wall treatments, such as hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper or silk-upholstered walls. Until Elizabeth and Jane married into rich families, the Bennets were on their way down the socioeconomic ladder. Although the device for mechanical block-printing wasn’t produced until the 1820s (ten years after Pride and Prejudice was written), the Bennets’ hand-made, block printed wallpaper still would have been fairly affordable, as it only consisted of two colors and, therefore, required less labor than a more colorful design would have demanded. “It’s perfectly appropriate for the time, as it is light and spriggy,” said Caroline Percy.
The cottages of the Dashwood women of Sense and Sensibility and the Bates women of Emma depict the socioeconomic level below that of the Bennet family: the genteel poor. Both sets of women were raised in great houses, but were forced to move into quaint, run-down cottages, as their fathers’ and husbands’ estates were left to distant male relatives. Although the Dashwood and Bates women continued to move within well-to-do circles, they were left nearly penniless, which would have greatly affected the ways they approached their interiors. At first glance, the Dashwoods’ cottage sitting room in the 1995 depiction of Sense and Sensibility appears to look like a perfectly suitable cottage interior for the time with its mismatched slipcovers, vernacular chairs, and cosy, low ceilings. However, eagle-eyed design history enthusiasts might notice how this room commits the biggest (yet all-too-familiar) period drama faux pas: using pieces from the future. In front of their fire grate (which is undoubtedly Victorian) is an early twentieth-century Chinese rug at the centre of the room—the kind that would have been placed in the most fashionable of Art Deco penthouses— which takes away from the desired effect.
The cottage belonging to Miss and Mrs Bates of the 2020 rendition of Emma is very curious, because the walls are covered from floor to ceiling in seventeenth-century Flemish tapestries. Now, how might someone of such limited means be able to afford such an astronomically expensive (and rather outdated) luxury? Well, remember, the Bates ladies did hail from a much wealthier background. Perhaps the new family who inherited their grand estate let the ladies take a piece of their heritage with them as a reminder of home. Perhaps Miss and Mrs Bates stole them as they were packing up to live a life of less leisure. Miranda Hart scuttling off into the distance with rolled-up tapestries under her arms is a mental image that has, admittedly, amused us considerably.
Alright, here comes the moment of truth. Overall, all historians agreed that the BBC productions were the most accurate—mainly because they didn’t have the budget to implement too much artistic license, so they had to use pre-existing (mostly National Trust) properties as their sets. Regardless of who produced them, all productions had varying amounts of blunders like the odd Victorian fireplace, poor quality reproduction furniture, or the use of stark white paint—which Dr Parissien assured us would never have happened.
However, in our historians’ opinions, there were two major aspects missing from all productions. First, there was hardly any substantial use of spaces that represented the revival of specifically English styles that occurred in the Regency period. The most common of these revivals was the Gothic style, and particularly the picturesque gothick of the mid-eighteenth century (as opposed to the morally-rooted Gothic Revival of the Victorians). Oliver Gerrish noted that 2007’s Northanger Abbey does attempt to channel the gothick, but they used Lismore Castle as their main set, which “certainly looks the part, but it was largely rebuilt by AWN Pugin decades after the novel was set.” Second, all productions failed to portray the lighting of the Regency period correctly. “These productions often use what would have been a year’s supply of candles in one scene!” Dr Parissien laughed. However, regarding lighting, we think all productions get a pass, as actually being able to see the actors is probably important. Afterall, no one expects absolute perfection of period dramas.
Now, what about Bridgerton specifically? If we can’t expect historic perfection from other productions, why would we ever expect perfection from a show that’s really supposed to be its own world with a Regency twist? In the Bridgerton universe, it’s completely acceptable for string quartets to play Maroon 5 songs, and we’re all alright with that— so why should we look at their interiors any differently? “I’m not a purist,” said Dr Sands, “and I believe that period dramas are for people to enjoy. History should be interesting and fun, otherwise, the public aren’t going to engage with it. So, if these interior scenes are beautiful, alluring, and add to the narrative of that particular adaptation, then it’s not entirely problematic if a scene is not exactly historically accurate. The historian in me notices these things, but then I have to remember that my husband merrily sitting next to me—a scientist—couldn’t care less. He’s just enjoying what he's watching.” Although these productions have their varying degrees of historic accuracy, at the end of the day, it’s all about creating a space for escapism, whether it’s to the Regency period or a new universe altogether.
