Long before we started buying furniture in flat-pack form, there was a glorious era of beautiful, warm brown furniture adored by the Victorians. And it came ready-made, by a real craftsman. This was the oak press, the roomy tallboy, the cavernous wardrobe and delightful dining table owned by our ancestors back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Victorian brown furniture was put in the shade

The tide turned when the likes of MFI and Ikea introduced mass-produced Scandinavian flat-pack pieces and lighter-toned pine. The irony was that much of it wasn’t even made of wood, but chipboard with a shiny veneer. But it was cheap and it sold like crazy, putting the Victorian’s brown furniture in the shade.

For decades afterwards, perfectly serviceable pieces of Victorian, Edwardian and early 20th century brown furniture were given the chop and consigned for firewood. But, thanks to TV dramas including Downton Abbey and The Crown, brown furniture is now enjoying something of a renaissance.

Victorian brown furniture is coming back into fashion

Whether it’s upcycled, painted or used as a signature piece in all its brown glory, the trend is growing for vintage pieces from the era. And now you can pick up a bargain. Pieces that used to cost in excess of £1,500 can now be found at antique dealers for less than £500 and even well made Victorian chests of drawers can be picked up for the same price as a flat-pack set at Ikea.

Whereas a classic Victorian mahogany bureau would command a £2,500 price tag in an antique shop in the 1980s and 1990s, today it could be found for just £350 to £500 thanks to its fall from fashion. When browsing for brown, look out for work from the design houses of Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Arne Jacobsen, Miles van der Rohe and Herman Miller.

Experts at the auctioneers Christie’s say there has been an increase in the number of buyers opting for a small selection of signature pieces and suggest people now have the confidence to mix and match antique and modern styles. Classics Direct, which sells French-style period furniture, has credited ITV’s Downton Abbey for the comeback of brown furniture.

Giles Hume of the Old Painted Furniture restoration company from Holt in Norfolk said the nature of his family business had changed over the decades, from restoring furniture to its original glory to nowadays upcycling it with paint. He said: “It’s now incredibly cheap to pick up brown furniture at auction.

“It doesn’t bother us if something is a bit bashed up because we can sort problems like that out. We know that it will be well made and sturdy and that any work that does need to be done will probably be cosmetic.

“We love the history of furniture and will always include a little bit about what the piece is on the price tag, its age, the wood, that kind of thing. In many ways, it’s a shame more people don’t like the furniture as it is, but we find that most prefer it to be painted to suit a more modern house.

“Our colour schemes are all Farrow and Ball-style, muted shades that will sit alongside most decoration schemes. When we paint furniture, we obviously don’t know what colour a room is going to be, so we go for colours like soft blues and greens and biscuit and putty shades.”

Reflecting on changing demands during the life of his business, he said: “Around 50 years ago, my granddad was repairing veneer. Today, we will just use filler and paint over the veneer – in many ways it’s a shame to lose that original finish, but we just can’t sell the original pieces.” He added that the biggest sellers for the company are wardrobes and dressers.

“By painting furniture and giving it a new lease of life, it means that beautiful pieces will end up in people’s houses again. Sometimes I wonder if in 20 or 30 years time I’ll be stripping off the paint that I put on: things have a habit of coming back into fashion eventually.”

In the meantime, Giles is just enjoying the brown furniture renaissance that Downton Abbey helped inspire.

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