Shopping for antiques in real life has always been one of our favourite things, whether we're getting up in the early hours to drive to the regular markets like Kempton or Ardingly, pottering around the dealers' shops in Tetbury, Petworth or on the Pimlico Road, or jostling for a place at a regional auction house to cherry pick from the latest private collection and estate sales. Increasingly, though, such activities take place online – the experience of buying antiques online has been getting ever smoother over the last few years, while the variety of pieces on offer is expanding exponentially. There's an online shop out there for every need, from Instagram dealers selling pretty bits and bobs to well-established antiques experts catering to discerning clients. And then there are the massive aggregators like The Saleroom, where everyone we know seems to spend half their lives, Vinterior and 1stDibs, used by interior designers and regular joes alike. We've gathered together the ones we can't live without, whether we're on the hunt for investment furniture, vintage art or just a charming knick knack for a gap on the mantelpiece.
The big marketplaces
The Saleroom has been life-changing for the auction nuts among us, bringing pretty much every UK auction house's sales to a convenient online platform. It hosts live broadcasts of physical auctions taking place around the UK and the world, with the catalogues coming online anywhere between a few months to a few days beforehand. You can set alerts for things you are looking for and be notified when matching items come up for sale, and although the bidding can get pretty intense from time to time, you're very likely to get a serious bargain here and there (like a much-admired Swiss landscape painting this writer picked up for £10). Just be aware there is commission to pay on top of what you bid, and you'll likely need to go and pick up your purchases within a few days from the auction house's premises, or arrange a courier (which can be expensive).
The original online auction site where you can find almost anything, although you may have to comb through quite a lot of nonsense first. As with any online marketplace, it's worth really doing your research, getting your keywords right, and making judicious use of the filters to minimise the amount of time you spend trawling.
Vinterior partners with vintage shops and dealers around the UK to put their stock online, so there's a huge variety of things to buy at a range of prices. It has become known for mid-century goods, but there is much more to it than that. It is also more managed than most other marketplaces – there is a customer service team, there are periodic sales, and there are editorial round-ups of certain kinds of furniture, which all makes it easier to navigate than Ebay or The Saleroom.
There are hidden gems to be discovered on Facebook's selling platform, where people often list their antiques for a quick sale. It's not as extensive as eBay and relies more on luck of the draw, but it can turn up some very good finds if you put the work in.
A marketplace for high-end antiques, art, and collectors' items from a selection of dealers around the world, 1stDibs is the place to find the dream piece for your house. If you're looking for antique Murano glass, a Memphis bookcase or a Louis XVI chimneypiece, this is the place to be – and there's also a thriving jewellery and fashion side to the business, so you can get all your luxury needs in one go. There are no bargain buys here, but it's a great place to fantasise even if you don't have a mega budget.
Originally a centre for handmade items, Etsy's vintage trade has become just as important; items come from all over the world and you're bound to find a bargain. We particularly like it for textiles: it has become the platform of choice for both antique and contemporary rugs from small-scale dealers around the world, and there's a huge variety to be found on there.
Online auction site Catawiki has everything from natural wonders to art to design and even fine wine!" says Charlotte Buchanan, co-founder of Buchanan Studio. "It’s a global platform that often has those one-off things you didn’t even know you needed. It’s pretty amazing and we use it for more specialist projects or when looking for very specific items, like recently when we needed to source Ancient Greek artefacts.”
Selency offers a similar concept to Vinterior, but this time hailing from France, so you can get all the delights of a brocante in the comfort of your living room.
If you want to replicate the experience of browsing in an antique shop you stumbled into on a countryside jaunt, sellingantiques.co.uk is delightful. It brings together over 500 antique shops, some who have their own separate e-commerce websites and others who don't. There are more than 70,000 pieces to browse on there, and the homepage has a rolling update of antiques uploaded within the last 48 hours, so you can easily keep an eye on what's new.
Another site bringing together antiques and vintage dealers from around the UK, well-beloved of interior designers. You'll find well-known names on here such as Brownrigg, Miles Griffiths, and The French House. There's a huge selection at Decorative Collective, helpfully subdivided by period and style.
The sister site to Decorative Collective has more of a ‘vintage’ focus, although you will find antiques on there. The stock, which includes furniture, art and textiles, is relatively affordable – most things are under £1000. It is a simple hub for dealers to upload their stock, and has a similar vibe to Vinterior, though it is less managed.
Established shops with easy websites
A lot of the well-established antiques and vintage dealers who pop up time and time again on our pages now have excellent, frequently updated websites and businesses that are well-attuned to the needs of online shoppers. The following websites are ones we like to check regularly, and importantly, these are the ones where you can easily add something to your cart and checkout online, rather than those which require you to enquire about a given piece.
Based in Gloucestershire, Lorfords is a firm interior designer favourite for both antiques and reproduction furniture. Their range is excellent – you'll find furniture from across the centuries, both traditional pieces and more unexpected ones, plus rugs and textiles, art, and even antiques for the garden. The online shopping process is quick and simple – you can choose to organise your own collection/delivery or have them do it for a flat fee.
One of our favourite gallery-cum-dealers, 8 Holland Street has expanded over the last five years from their original premises off Kensington Church Street to an extensive gallery on St James and a townhouse in Bath (where you can also stay overnight). It's a brilliant destination for art, textiles and furniture, a mixture of stylish 20th-century pieces and more contemporary designs.
A venerable antiques dealer off the Pimlico Road, Tarquin Bilgen is the place to go for furniture that's a work of art in itself. With a particularly strong line in lighting, he also gathers beautiful things of every variety from the 18th to the 20th centuries. His website is regularly updated with new stock and easy to use.
Dealer and decorator Adam Bray has been a longstanding member of our Top 100 Interior Designers, creating rooms with plenty of character in the form of interesting, idiosyncratic antiques. His shop in Camden is the place to go to get a bit of his style for yourself, and thankfully it's convenient to shop online. You can find a wealth of both substantial furniture and small decorative objects in the shop, and even a cupboard full of things to buy for gifts. Prominent among the pieces are textiles from around the world, which Adam likes to stretch and hang on the walls instead of pictures. "Textiles are still undervalued," he explains, "and add so much texture and uniqueness to a room."
This Lancashire-based dealer is best known for their excellent collection of Arts & Crafts and early Heals furniture, with beautifully made and incredibly versatile pieces in oak standing out on their website. They also carry an eclectic mix of other furniture and accessories, from 17th-century oak chests to gilt wall mirrors. They have an excellent courier service and make everything easy if you buy online.
With a showroom in Malton, Yorkshire, this longstanding antiques business has a brilliant online shop (you can use the Shop Pay, Google Pay or Paypal platforms to check out). There is a huge range of stock, from 19th-century Empire-style tables to rustic milking stools, and it's also very much worth checking out their own line of products, ‘Form by Tallboy'.
A favourite of our Style Director Ruth Sleightholme, this fantastic business in Surrey does a strong line in pews and chapel chairs – perfect for use around a dining table. The style ranges from ornate high church pieces to simple non-Conformist furniture, and you will also find unusual pieces like altar rails, prie dieux, and hymn boards, along with plenty of enormous brass candlesticks.
Specialising in 20th-century design, this east London shop has a rotating stock of cool and unusual pieces, often rather brutalist in outline and featuring plenty of metal. It's the perfect place to find something with a bit of edge for an interior. It uses the handy Shop Pay platform to check out, which couldn't be easier.
With a 10,000 square foot showroom in west London, this is a fantastic place to browse, and its online platform is just as good. There's plenty of furniture of all periods to explore, but we really love the decorative accessories and art sections, which make it super easy to find the kinds of bits and bobs that make a house a home.
Instagram and online-only dealers
Over the last five years, there has been an explosion of dealers whose primary medium is Instagram, where goods are often sold via regular ‘drops’, in which new stock is uploaded all in one go. With popular accounts, you'll need to be pretty quick off the mark in messaging the owner to reserve the piece.
This is a vast and shifting landscape in which it can be hard to know who to trust, who routinely finds the best stuff, who prices fairly and who is ahead of the trends instead of merely following them. If you sometimes visit antiques markets such as Kempton or Ardingly in real life, our Decoration Editor Rémy Mishon also recommends asking any sellers you like if they have Instagram accounts, so that you can then follow them and keep up with new acquisitions and drops. There is an almost infinite variety out there, but these are the ones we know and love.
Former House & Garden stylist Charlie Porter is one of the biggest names to emerge from the wave of dealers who got their start via Instagram and their websites. Her shop, Tat London, focuses on decorative accessories: brass wall sconces, intriguing paintings and sketches, and ceramic tables lamps.
This east London dealer does very well with antiques that would work well in a contemporary interior, whether they are themselves modern or have the sort of forms and patina that would bring character to a modern space, such as the ebonised Aesthetic Movement desk we had our eye on recently.
Jack Laver Brister's expert eye finds elegant antiques from his base in Frome, Somerset. As the name suggests, his style skews traditional: think Colefax & Fowler chintz curtains, Edwardian sofas and charming slipper chairs. His main Instagram account is interiors heaven, but his selling account can be found at @tradchap.antiques. Send him a message on Instagram if anything takes your fancy.
We've constantly got our eye on what these guys have in stock. Based in Bristol, they have a really nice edit of restored pieces - wooden tables and cabinets, upholstered furniture and rugs - all at affordable prices. They also work with an extremely efficient courier service so there is virtually no faff with delivery.
Suffolk-based Ambrice Miller has developed her Instagram business into a well respected online brand, with plenty of charming vintage art and sculpture, plus her own lines: one of beautiful bobbin furniture, and another of very smart outdoor pieces, including some glorious daybeds.
When stylish people have houses to clear, Natalia Rawley is the person they call, and her Instagram account is full of treasures you might not see anywhere else, from AGA cookers to upholstered headboards. Plus the more usual vintage/antique fare: elegant chests of drawers, sweet vintage paintings and plenty of flowery crockery. It's a fun lucky dip, and we're always intrigued to see what will turn up next.
If you like a rustic, patina-full look to your vintage furniture, Brewhouse Salvage, whose warehouse is in Romney Marsh, is a great account to monitor (and a favourite of our Decoration Editor Rémy Mishon). Keep an eye out for lovely garden antiques (including small glasshouses), and characterful seating and tables.
A great source for vintage rugs, Studio Ronde is one to watch for brightly coloured kilims and Scandi flatweaves.
'Stuff gathered by three generations of makers, menders, waste-haters, treasure-seekers and savers' is how this account describes itself, run by regular House & Garden contributor Ros Byam Shaw, her daughters and mother. Expect smaller decorative items such as glassware and ceramics, all utterly lovely and quick to be snapped up so it's one to set alerts for.
Brass wall sconces, elegant wall brackets and bamboo frame mirrors – Kept London is an account to follow for zeitgeisty antiques sourced by a gimlet eye.
For antiques that are a little off the beaten track – think unusual decorative details and lots of colour – Conspicuous Collector is one to keep an eye on. Lisa – the mind behind the posts – has some secret sources for truly incredible pieces and specialises in large furniture items like dressers and cabinets.
Kat – who runs the account – has a knack for sourcing classic antiques; think Victorian pine chests of drawers and Hungarian benches. Her pieces will never fall out of favour and can also be bought via her website, patointeriorsshop.com.
All the pieces that are sold via this Instagram account have a wonderful patina to them and are often quite unusual and unique. It's one to follow for intriguing finds that you just can't resist.
Follow for understated, elegant pieces, from tiny objects like match strikers and trinket boxes, to classic Windsor chairs and characterful milking stools.
Paris-based dealer Max Keys stands out on this list for his focus on more modernist pieces. You won't find bobbins here but instead a weekly drop at 12pm (French time) on Mondays (or the previous Friday if you subscribe to his mailing list) of intriguing furniture from the 1960s onwards.
Specialising in vintage art, Tarn was started over lockdown after Tanya Zendra lost her job. Come for bright and cheerful expressionist landscapes and still lifes, and stay for her strong selection of antique furniture, carefully restored and ready to go to a new home.
Another excellent account for small furniture – chairs, side tables and compact shelving – The Antiques Hound has a winning selection of pieces from the 18th century onwards, plus some very sweet Swedish paintings. It's a side project to their day job as Omelo Mirrors, handcrafting decorative mirrors.
The design/antiques hybrid Folie Chambre came into being in 2021. Founder Natalie Tillison's first contemporary piece was a brightly coloured, lacquered bobbin mirror, which quickly sold out. She has subsequently introduced furniture, trays, tables, tote bags and more to her product line. The antiques side of the business is equally playful.
Everyone needs a frivolous piece now and then to bring a bit of fun to an interior and this is an excellent source for colourful, patterned, kitschy small things. It's especially good for playful tableware.
