The Best Bar Trolleys For Your Next Soirée

Serve up some old school glamour

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Bar trolleys are a living room staple. It’s on every Pinterest feed these days, but the humble carts have would have been a strange interior feature only two decades ago. So where did bar trolleys actually come from? And which are worth investing in?

The Best Bar Trolleys

The Matilda Goad x Anthropologie collaboration with a red bar trolley in a house with a painting above it

Image courtesy of Matilda Goad x Anthropologie

A History of the Humble Bar Trolley

Initially the preserve of upper echelons of British society, bar trolleys were an offshoot of tea trolleys that staff would roll up to serve the ladies of the household. This was the standard practice du jour across the 19th to 20th Centuries. The tea trolley only morphed to the bar trolley by the second half of the 20th Century, where many Americans moved to the suburbs in record numbers, and wanted to create their own home bar.

So know when you see the glisteningly golden brass and glass of the bar trolleys on the gram today, these were actually inspired by the 1950s. So pick up a cocktail, and peruse our round-up of the most beautiful bar trolleys out there.

How to Style a Bar Trolley

Think in Colours

The infamous Dakota Johnson faux limes debacle on her Architectural Digest House Tour, is viral a reason: limes add a whole lot of zing to a room. Let the limes, lemons, and whatever niche additions you add to your cocktail, do the aesthetic talking.

It’s all About Height

If we’re going to be pedantic: stack wisely. Vary up the height of your bottles, glasses, and make the trolley visually clear and create a sense of variety.

Let Foliage Enter the Chat

Don’t shy away from adding a vase of greenery, textures, or even flowers to spruce up the trolley. It could also be nice to have a climbing plant tumbling over your various cocktail accoutrements of your trolley.

Glassware is Your Accessory; Use it

If you haven’t already heard: glassware is as much as an aesthetic statement these days as a showstopping outfit. Our pick of the day is a swirly whirly tumblers, by Henry Holland.

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