6 Ways to Style KLM Delft Blue Houses Throughout Your Home

Flying World Business Class with KLM is an experience in and of itself, with the best service, friendliest flight attendants, and the most delicious meals. You leave the plane feeling taken care of and, most of the time, wishing the flight was a little longer. It’s easy to fall in love with flying World Business Class with KLM, but there is one part of the whole experience that we never expected to fall in love with: receiving a KLM Delft Blue House at the end of every flight.

The first time we flew World Business Class with KLM was two years ago on our first trip to Amsterdam. We were blown away by all of the reasons listed above and felt completely satisfied with our experience by the end of it, so imagine our surprise when, right before we landed, we were given the choice to pick a small, blue and white ceramic little Delft house, one for each of us. It felt like the cherry on top of an already extraordinary flight.

On each flight, KLM gifts every World Business Class passenger with a Delft House that’s filled with Dutch gin, also known as genever. A new house (based on real Dutch buildings & houses in the Netherlands) is revealed every year on October 7, KLM’s birthday. There are currently 100 houses (the 100th anniversary was this year!) out now, one for every year KLM has been an airline, though the tradition of gifting a house began in 1950’s. Over the years they’ve become a collector’s item for frequent World Business Class flyers, and are something to look forward to at the end of every flight. 

We’ve been on six World Class Business flights in the last year, traveling to and from Amsterdam with KLM. In that time, we’ve accumulated 18 houses (we’ve actually outsourced to add a few to our collection) that are prominently displayed on the antique hutch in our living room, which is the first thing you see when you enter our home. It’s been fun to keep track of which ones we have (currently, we have numbers 50, 84, 44, 69, 48, 43, 64, 45, 54, 39, 55, 41, 99, 66, 70, 62, and two 100’s) and which ones we want on the KLM Delft Blue Houses app on our phones, which is free to download. These little houses have become special and precious to us and they always put the biggest smiles on our faces when we walk past that hutch. They remind us of the kind smiles of the flight attendants and the smell of the pesto pasta that we had for dinner on the flight. They remind us of our time in Amsterdam and walking all of the curvy streets with the leaning canal houses. They remind us of a company who supports inclusion, acceptance, and diversity in the people they hire and work with. They remind us of home.

Since we’ve started our collection, we’ve had to get creative in how they’re displayed around our house. We’re constantly rearranging rooms and décor, so we thought it would be fun to show a few different ways that you can style them throughout your home. Here we go! 

Holiday Themed:

Much like the little, snowy Christmas villages people display during the holidays, you can create your own little village with a few Delft houses, some pieces of garland (real or fake), and a little bit of decorative cobweb for the “snow”. It’s a fun, unexpected twist on a Christmas classic that will put you in the holiday spirit every time you pass by it.

Making a Statement:

The first thing you see when you enter our home is a big, old, antique hutch we found at an estate sale years ago, and displayed in a horizontal line on the middle shelf are all of our KLM Delft houses. There’s something about seeing them all in a row, with their staggered rooflines and blue & white silhouettes that immediately catch your eye and draw your attention to the little Dutch houses from the Netherlands. It’s an incredibly simple look, but a classic one that just feels right.

Color Me Blue:

An easy way to decorate anything is to group similarly colored items together and display them however you want to. Sticking with the blue and white theme of the Delft houses, we paired it with our blue lamp, a cute postcard of some canal houses we picked up in Amsterdam, a white candle, and a painting by a talented artist with shades of blue in it. By grouping these items together, it instantly creates a look of cohesiveness that the eye is immediately drawn to. It’s a safe choice, but one that you can never mess up.

Daily Reminder:

Placing a Delft house next to a photo of the trip you acquired it on, like the one on our bedside table, is the perfect little reminder of a fun and exciting trip- our first time in Amsterdam, actually. Since it’s in our bedroom, we see it when we go to bed at night and when we wake up in the morning, giving us a chance to stroll down memory lane any time we want to remember the magic and joy that our favorite city brings us.

Letting Them Shine:

Depending on how many Delft houses you have in your collection, displaying them on a shelf or bookcase all by themselves is a great way to show them off. When grouped together, especially against a dramatic background color like our black bookcase, the houses stand out and really make a statement. Sometimes the prettiest way of displaying them is also the simplest.

Gadgets & Gizmos Aplenty:

Because we’re some of the most nostalgic people you’ll ever meet, we thought it would be fun to group the Delft houses together with some other items we’ve picked up from traveling. We got this house on our second trip to Amsterdam, and it’s sitting next to the Staghorn fern we got on our first trip to New Orleans a few years ago, some rocks we picked up on a beach in Bermuda, a small statue of the twin towers from NYC, and a holiday pin that a woman gave to Thomas after she had a little too much to drink, also while we were in New Orleans. No matter how bad of a day we’ve had, seeing all of these tokens from the places we’ve been always brightens our day and reminds us of the importance of traveling. 

No matter how you style your KLM Delft house, they’re forever a part of your story and journey and travels around the world. Though they live in your home where the every day messiness of life happens, they’re gentle reminders of where you’ve been, and reflect the exciting possibilities of where you can go. We’re looking forward to adding more to our collection in the future and collecting as many little blue and white houses as we can, which brings the question to mind: where to next?