This 224-Year-Home Decor Trend Is Making a Major Comeback (You’ll See It Everywhere!)

Although it’s hard to imagine life at home without modern conveniences like a refrigerator and a shower, there are some things the vintage homes from the 1800s just got right, as one TikTok user is uncovering. While in the process of bringing the charm back into her 1882 home, Charlotte Violet rediscovered the lost art and function of antique finger plates in her Victorian-era home and has been reinstalling them on every single one of her doors throughout the space.

“I think some of us were just meant to bring old homes back to life,” Charlotte captioned the post from Maym in which she shares some of her favorite updates (or … are they un-updates?).

Finger plates are literally just that: metal plates you install on your interior doors to protect the paint or finish from dirty fingers. As Kris VanBuskirk, a real estate agent based in Boulder, previously told Apartment Therapy, Victorian-era homes were all “about showing off style and opulence.”

If you take a look at your own space, you might notice some of the doors in your home have gotten a bit mucky just above the doorknob. Finger plates prevent that muck from appearing.

And as Charlotte shares in another video from April, they’re so easy to install. They literally just screw or nail right into your door where you naturally push to open.

You can find authentic Victorian, Edwardian, or even Art Nouveau finger plates at antique stores, salvage warehouses, or on secondhand sites like eBay. Or, you can pick up some reproductions from sellers on Etsy or sites like House of Antique Hardware.

And once you install your first one, you’ll start wondering why people ever stopped using them in the first place. They’re pretty, practical, and add so much charm where you least expect it.