Horace Walpole once had his own word for the atmosphere he wanted to create in his house in Twickenham: “gloomth,” a blend of gloom and warmth. It was 18th-century London, and he was renovating a small villa into something like a fairytale castle. Nearly 280 years later, the same feeling is back in interior design magazines. Gothic romance in 2026 is about dark fabrics, lace, forest-print wallpaper and walls where a poster can bring drama to a room. Here, we explore the style’s origins, why it is taking off now, and how to hang art that creates just the right amount of gloom without making a room feel cold.
Quick facts: Strawberry Hill in Twickenham was renovated from 1749 at a cost of about £20,720. Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto was published in 1764. The interior design magazine Livingetc published its guide to Gothic romance on February 14, 2026, the same weekend the film Wuthering Heights premiered. The Victoria and Albert Museum presented an exhibition about the house in 2010, curated by Michael Snodin.
Strawberry Hill and gloomth: How Horace Walpole invented the Gothic dream
Walpole, son of Great Britain’s first prime minister, took over a lease in Twickenham in May 1747 and began renovating the house in 1749. He did not design it himself. Instead, he gathered a small circle he called the Committee on Taste, with his friends John Chute and Richard Bentley, and later the architect James Essex contributed towers and a façade. The first phase of construction was completed around 1753, the second began in 1760, and the final bill came to about £20,720. That was an enormous sum for a summer house, and almost every room was an experiment.
What made Strawberry Hill historically significant was that Walpole drew on real medieval models: tomb monuments, cathedral vaults and choirs. Rosemary Hill, who has written about the history of Gothic architecture, argues that the house has good reason to be called the starting point of the Gothic Revival, and curator Michael Snodin called it the most influential building in the early Gothic Revival at the 2010 V&A exhibition. Some scholars, such as Peter Lindfield, object to calling the style “Strawberry Hill Gothic,” but there is little controversy that the house influenced everything that came after.
In 1764, Walpole published the novel The Castle of Otranto, often considered the first Gothic novel. It had everything the style still thrives on: a castle, a curse, a secret in the walls, and a shadowy romance behind the fear. The house and the book were two sides of the same project. After Walpole’s death in 1797, it was all sold off: in 1842, the collections were sold at what was called the Great Sale, which lasted 24 days and emptied the house. It wasn’t until the 2000s that things turned around. The house was placed on the World Monuments Fund’s list of the 100 most endangered buildings in 2003, renovated at a cost of around £9 million, and reopened on October 2, 2010.
Wuthering Heights, castlecore, and rooms that play a part
There’s a concrete reason the style is making a comeback in 2026 in particular. Livingetc writer Olivia Wolfe wrote on February 14, 2026, that the year is “for gothic romantics,” with Brontë as the guiding light. As cultural touchstones, she pointed to the film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which premiered around Valentine’s Day, rumors of a new TV series of Pride and Prejudice, and Jacob Elordi and Paul Mescal in Frankenstein and Hamnet, respectively. The magazine also uses the term castlecore and notes that interior design trends are moving toward more theatrical themes.
A roundup by bedding maker Bed Threads of Pinterest’s 2026 forecast mentions romantic gothic tones, along with art deco glamour and cool blue palettes, as part of this year’s direction. It’s a retailer’s interpretation rather than Pinterest’s own report, so we cite it with caution. But the direction aligns with what we wrote about opera aesthetics as Pinterest’s most dramatic trend: after years of beige and limewashed walls, many people want rooms with a set-like quality, where fabric, light, and imagery create a story.
"Gothic romance isn’t about making a room dark. It’s about letting it be a little haunted by something beautiful."
Gothic romance or dark academia? Four differences that make the distinction
The two styles share a color palette and a fondness for dark wood, so they’re often confused. The difference is clear, though, when you look at the story the room tells. We’ve previously covered dark academia and the history of the scholarly style, where the library is at the center: books, desks, globe collections, tweed. Gothic romance, by contrast, stands on the threshold of the supernatural. The style draws more of its power from poets and ruins than from universities.
The first difference is materials. Dark academia favors leather, wool, and book spines, while Gothic romanticism uses lace, velvet, sheer curtains, and metallic sheen. The second is lighting: the library style calls for reading lamps, while the Gothic style calls for candlelight and muted twilight. The third is the room’s function, since dark academia is a work environment and Gothic romanticism belongs in the bedroom, hallway, and dining room. The fourth is the mood: one is focused, the other dreamy.
Compared with Victorian style, which is filled with ornaments and salon-style wall hangings, Gothic romanticism is more sparse. Walpole’s ideal was not abundance but atmosphere, which is why a few large pictures often work better than a wall full of small ones.
Chain mail, lace, and verdure: the style’s five materials according to Livingetc
Livingetc breaks the trend down into five elements, offering a good way to understand what sets Gothic romantic interiors apart from an ordinary dark room. The first is metallic surfaces in the form of chain mail, that is, fabric-like metal mesh hung as decoration or used in lighting. The second is lace details, for example in curtains and lampshades. The third is dramatic drapery and tented ceilings, where fabric is drawn up to a point on the ceiling. The fourth concerns bedding: bed curtains, ruffled edges, silver-blue against navy, and butter yellow against burgundy. The fifth is tapestries and verdure prints, the old woven wall hangings where foliage and animals form a forest wall.
Verdure tapestries are especially interesting when thinking about prints. They draw on the same world of imagery as botanical prints, but in a darker, denser palette. A print featuring a dense wall of dark green foliage can do the job of wallpaper without requiring you to change your wallpaper, which is especially valuable if you rent.
Room by room: bedroom, hallway, dining room, and living room
In the bedroom, the bed is the stage. Livingetc’s tips on bed curtains and canopy ceilings can be adapted on a smaller scale: hang fabric from a simple rod behind the headboard and place a large, dark-toned print above it. A landscape at dusk, like the German Romantics often painted, sets the mood without dominating. For a standard 160 cm bed, an image around 70x100 centimeters is enough.
The hallway is where Gothic romance makes the biggest impact with the least effort. You step in from the stairwell, and the hallway is a transitional space where drama is welcome. Two narrow, portrait-format pictures, hung at eye level in black wooden frames with narrow mats, create the feel of an archway. The dining room can take more: here you can hang a row of three to five pictures in the same type of frame, lit by candlelight or a dim lamp above the table, so the wall becomes a backdrop for dinner.
In the living room, you need to strike a balance. Choose one large painting as a starting point, preferably by a Gothic or Romantic artist, and keep the rest of the room calmer. A dark velvet sofa and a lamp with a lace shade go a long way. Don't overdo it: the style works best in moderation, and a room with only Gothic elements can easily feel like a themed room.
Tip: Buy three things instead of an entire interior. One large dark poster, a pair of long curtains in sheer fabric, and a source of warm, low light will do more than a wall full of little things. Hanging the picture in a wooden frame in walnut or black also gives it the weight the motifs otherwise lack.
Motifs, frames, and colors: slate, forest green, and burgundy
Gothic romance draws on motifs from the Romantic era, that is, the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Caspar David Friedrich's solitary figures by the sea, Johann Heinrich Füssli's The Nightmare from 1781, Turner's stormy seas, and Gustave Doré's illustrations of shadowy forests are all good reference points. You can find motifs in the same spirit among works by famous artists, while retro and vintage posters often have the worn, aged look the style calls for. Black-and-white photographs of ruins, churchyards, and misty forests also work, especially as prints with a contrasting tonal range.
The color palette ranges from slate gray and jet black through forest green to burgundy and navy blue. Livingetc also mentions the combination of silver blue with navy and butter yellow with burgundy, showing that the style is not exclusively dark. A store-based guide from EGA, which sells solid mahogany furniture, lists forest green, slate, burgundy, and charcoal gray as the style's main colors. It's a commercial source, but the color choices align well with the others.
The frame does a lot of the work. Choose dark wood or black, ideally with a wider profile than you’d normally pick, and add a mat in off-white or dark gray depending on the image’s tone. Sizes such as 50x70 and 70x100 centimeters create the right presence; 30x40 works as a complement in a group. To read more about the house itself, see Wikipedia’s article about Strawberry Hill House, and find Livingetc’s original article in Olivia Wolfe’s guide to Gothic romance.
Frequently asked questions about Gothic romance in interior design
Want to create a room in Walpole’s spirit? Start with works by famous artists and black-and-white posters, then choose a dark frame and let the rest of the room take shape as the mood settles in.