Decorative Screens

While I have talked a lot about curtain room dividers and similar things on this site, decorative screens are something a little different. A decorative screen is not a curtain and is not made from fabric – instead it is either made from wood, metal, paper-like materials or similar things. Think of a traditional Japanese house – they make great use of decorative screens and often use them instead of walls.

While you can get extremely simple and basic looking decorative screens (as I have mentioned earlier the Japanese usually have them in plain white with a wooden border) there is nothing to say that you can get them decorated and looking extremely pretty.

Where decorative screens also differ from curtain room dividers is that they are sometimes transparent or have holes in them. This leads me to believe that many people use decorative screens mainly to look nice rather than for practical purposes.

That is not to say that these screens don’t have any practical purposes at all. In bedrooms where people get changed these are often used as an area of sanctuary where the person who is changing can cover themselves behind. In fact, they are a very old fashioned piece of furniture, and decorative screens were a key piece in Victorian times (where ladies of the house would often use them to change while their maids or nannies were there).

Nowadays, as always happens with things people have started looking at decorative screens more as a piece of art that they can manipulate to create a certain look in their home (whether it be inside or outside the house). Since they are now viewed as potential art the boundaries have come down, and people have been getting more experimental and outrageous with their designs.

I have found recently that one of the best places to buy folding decorative screens from is on eBay, since they are rarely mass produced and since nearly everyone is unique in its look and in its decoration. Other places you might find decorative wall screens are in local antique shops since they often like to stock these kinds of items.