Hollywood Regency is one of the three loves I built New Regency on. What the great studio-era decorators did, and what still thrills me about them, is that they took classical elements and proportions and exaggerated them for dramatic effect. The bones were always correct. The volume was just turned up. That's the whole secret to doing this style in a way that outlives the trend cycle, and it's worth unpacking, because Hollywood Regency done badly dates faster than almost anything.
If you want the full anatomy of the look, I've written a complete Hollywood Regency style guide. This piece is about the harder question: how you build a glamorous room that still looks right in twenty years.
The glamour has a pedigree
The style comes out of 1930s and '40s Hollywood, when set decorators and a handful of society designers were inventing rooms for the camera. Dorothy Draper was doing cabana stripes and oversized plasterwork at a scale nobody had attempted. William Haines went from movie star to decorator and gave Joan Crawford and half the studio system rooms that mixed clean modern lines with fine antiques. What they shared was training in classical proportion. The drama sat on top of architecture that knew the rules it was breaking.
That's the test I apply to every "glam" piece today. Exaggerated, yes. Arbitrary, no.
Invest where the style actually lives
A few elements carry Hollywood Regency, and they're the ones worth real money.
Mirrors, first and always. Every room could use a mirror, and in this style the mirror is doing double duty: bouncing light and adding a little theater. My own favorite object is a gilt Federal-style convex mirror with plasterwork I'd defend like family. One serious mirror beats four decorative ones.
Gilt, in small doses. A little gilt somewhere in every room is a rule of mine regardless of style. Here it can be the mirror frame, the base of a lamp, the trim on a console. Restraint is what separates gilded from gaudy.
Lacquer and shine. Polished surfaces are the style's native finish: a lacquered console, a mirrored tray, hardware with real depth of polish.
Statement lighting. This is the one category where more personality is almost always better. A sculptural table lamp with a pleated shade does more for a Regency room than another accessory ever will, and lamplight is kinder to velvet and gilt than anything overhead.
Velvet and silk where hands land. Pillows, upholstery, curtains. The materials should feel as good as they look, because you're going to use them. More on that below.
Color: contrast, then jewels
High contrast is the engine of this style. Black and white, cream and espresso, a pale wall against dark-lacquered furniture. Onto that framework you add saturation: emerald, sapphire, ruby. Jewel tones will always be beautiful to me precisely because they don't chase trends. And every room needs a hint of red. In a Regency room that can be as small as the binding on a book or as committed as a ruby velvet pillow, but it has to be somewhere, because that jolt is what makes all the glamour feel alive rather than embalmed.
Pattern belongs here too. A bold paper on the walls gives the room its stage set. Our wallpaper collection draws directly on the Regency period's imagination, which is exactly the lineage this style wants.
The mistake that kills these rooms
Taking it too seriously. I've said this about New Regency and it's even more true of Hollywood Regency: the style was invented by people making movie sets, and it needs levity. A room where the velvet can't be sat on and the mirrored table exists to be dusted is a museum, and I don't decorate museums. Houses should be lived in, and every room should be enjoyed. Buy the velvet sofa you can actually nap on. Let the gilt mirror hang where the kids run past it.
Mix the eras or lose the timelessness
Old things look better with new things next to them. The original Regency decorators mixed antiques with brand-new studio pieces, and the rooms that still photograph well today are the mixed ones. A Louis-style chair beside a clean-lined modern sofa. A contemporary abstract over an antique console. If everything in the room was made in the same decade, the room will expire with that decade. Contrast and intention are what keep it breathing.
Where this fits in my world
New Regency, the style I've built my brand on, keeps Hollywood Regency's edge of glamour and whimsy but grounds it in a broader European classicism. If this room-building philosophy speaks to you, the complete New Regency guide is where I've laid the whole thing out. Start with the mirror, though. One serious piece to bounce the light around, and the room will tell you what it wants next.
