The Witch Ball is one of those lovely Lanes oddities: perched in the centre of the Lanes area, it…read moreis an easy place to miss on a meander, and a real treasure trove once found. Specialising in antique prints and maps, The Witch Ball offers some really exceptional pieces, well worth their price, and an excellent addition to any home. In terms of the pieces on display, The Witch Ball offers an excellent selection of various prints and maps. With pieces from all over the world, including maps of some ridiculously far flung locales, as well as hundreds of British and Brightonian pieces, there is truly something very any art lover. Everything is kept in excellent condition, and there are so many buried away that a good browse can take up more than the better part of an afternoon. In particular, I recommend going up the very tight staircase for a look-around upstairs: some of the best pieces are hidden away up there. There is little I can complain about in this excellent little antique shop. It is just the right side of pokey: not too difficult to explore, and yet small enough to feel homey and friendly. While the owners can sometimes be a little prickly, don't let that get in the way, as it is such a joy to browse through. If maps and prints aren't your thing, this isn't the place for you; if they are, give yourself a couple of hours on the weekend and take the time to find the piece for you. The reason for the high star rating, primarily, is the originality factor: you truly won't find pieces this good anywhere else, let alone in Brighton.

From the owner: Antique maps and prints, vintage and antique jewellery.read more

Vintage heaven! Just when you thought that Seven Dials, Clifton and Montpellier had reached their…read morepeak of chic, Artifice launches them into a different stratosphere. A tasteful eclectic selection of vintage furniture and accessories from classic and Art Deco to handsome Industrial. It would be hard not to come away with something. As well as the wonderful large vintage pieces the accessories are very enticing and would make great gifts. In particular I love the beautiful kitchenalia. At a time where so many retailers are reproducing vintage furniture and homewares, Artifice is a breath of fresh air. They offer the beauty of the original article as well as the practicality.

What a fabulous shop. An Alandins Cave for the Set dresser…read morelooking for the genuine article. Well done Sarah. The presentation offers ideas you can take home and try for yourself. Well worth a visit.

Beautiful shop full of treasures and well worth a visit with friendly helpful staff very welcomingread more

This place looks as if its contents were filched from some 18th c French chateau. In a word it's…read moreformidable. Antique chests of drawers, gilded mirrors, naked cherubs firing bows, ornate stone owls, and a dog which is not for sale and pretends to be dead.If your mother in law wins the lottery and offers to buy you a keepsake bring here here rather than let her buy you something porcelain. J'adore les trois angels!

As secondhand emporiums go, this North Laines indoor flea market is pretty sweet. To the naked eye,…read moreBrighton's many second hand and antique shops might seem the same, but trust me...there are subtle but very important differences! Take Snooper's Paradise for instance. I love the place, but it's undeniably the more commercial, touristy of the bunch, meaning they can inflate their prices. The Brighton Flea Market in Kemp Town: great for furniture, but I always feel a little like I'm in a museum as I walk around, which discourages me from committing to a thorough, full-on bargain hunt. Enter the North Laine Antique and Flea Market! I really enjoy browsing the shelves of the various rooms in this place. Unlike in some antiques shops, where I feel resigned to the fact that most items will exceed my budget, I know I will always find something here. Be it a velvet cushion cover or a ceramic tea pot, there is always something to tempt me, and at a reasonable price. My last visit yielded a £1 plant pot and a beautiful little painted dish. If you're after a mirror or kitchen or living room furniture, check out the second room, full of wooden cupboards, shelving units and kitchen tables. Like most antiques shops, items aren't categorised, but thankfully there isn't so much stuff that you're tripping over yourself to get to things. Top tip: you can often find cool shoes and some great vintage leather handbags. It's all luck of the draw of course, but well worth a look!

Like Snoopers Paradise and Brighton Flea Market, North Lane Antique and Flea Market is a dream…read moredestination for browsers and bric a brac lovers. Tucked away on Upper Gardner Street, this two storey building is accessed down a ramp and makes you feel like you're entering another world. There's the occasional modern item like a Michael Jackson poster or a recent pop annual but the majority of the space is taken up by chairs, desks, tables, lamps and unusual decorative items from the 1930s onwards. I often spot things I like here but rarely buy anything because most of it is too old fashioned or chintzy for my abode.

Run by veteran antique dealer Paul Downs and his partner April, SWAG is a stylish and unique…read moreshowroom that displays distinctive pieces of antique furniture. Everything is sourced by the couple themselves and as a result, you'll find old leather arm chairs and 1930s sofas next to stainless steel cabinets, wooden chests, trunks and unusual lights. The quality and originality of the stock means the prices venture towards the expensive. For those with a smaller budget however, there's also a small selection of paintings, decorative letters, statues, world globes and mirrors. Since the couple are so friendly, it's also worth making them an offer if there's something you really want but can't quite stretch to.

On first glance I thought this antiques shop looked slightly austere, and in fact I wasn't even…read moresure it WAS an antique shop at first, so sparsely arranged and high quality is the furniture. However, on closer inspection Swag proves to be a very stylish showroom of the highest quality antique furniture and home furnishings. It is an unusual experience compared with many of Brighton's other secondhand furniture dealers, who generally inhabit musty, cavernous shops, characterised by clutter and chaos. Swag is clean and polished; full of 1930s and 1940s office and home furnishings that would fit perfectly in a Film Noir set. I particularly like the metal desk lamps...they really capture something of another time. Although I personally enjoy the rummaging treasure-hunt aspect of the more casual antique/ junk shops in town, I do admire the experience and precision and with which the owners have sourced their collection. The stock is beautiful, just a little pricey for me! A great place to find striking one-offs if you have money to burn.

Eames chairs? Check Atomic sofa? Check…read moreEricofon telephones? Check Keracolour TV in round white plastic shell? Check Pair of British airline seats? Yup, the thing that distinguishes In My Room from all the other hip vintage furniture and antique stores is that alongside classic and sought after pieces by big designers they also sell unique and quirky pieces. Everything is lovingly sourced by the owner including original film posters and pieces of art. Right now, there's Cuban film posters and limited edition pieces by Banksy and Shepherds Fairey. And yes, anyone interested in the last pair of aircraft seats should pop in quick. They're from a British plane and come complete with seat-belts and ashtrays!

The owner of In My Room, Ollie Learmonth, seems to have watched too many episodes of The Avengers…read moreat an impressionable age. His shop pays homage to all things 'space-age' from bug-eyed television sets to G-Plan cabinets. Aficionados of Bond movies may be amused by Learmoth's reworking of the classic E Gomme-designed wing chair, from which Donald Pleasance glowered menacingly as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice; I shall look forward personally to exterminating you, Mr. Bond. Now that's not nice.

Lovely Jubbly has intrigued me each time I pass it on the bus. A different selection of furniture…read moreand home décor seems to be just outside the shop each day, luring me in. Well, I understand why some of the stock is put outside - the shop could not possibly contain anything else. I could barely walk through the door and assumed it was just a crowded entry way but, um, no. Things were everywhere, not categorised into any sections and leaving only the tiniest space in which to walk to the back. The best example: an end table sitting tentatively atop the jewellery case. I was nearly laughing by the time I snuck back out - I wasn't expecting such an adventure.

I can't believe I haven't reviewed this place yet! Apart form anything else, I love the name, it…read moremakes me smile, every time I walk past. And its such an inappropriate name (maybe its ironic?), considering the the way the place looks! From the outside it looks dark and dingy, and sort of like it might be harbouring vampires on the inside. Walk inside and what you actually find is a big old junk shop. This is a real sort the chaff from the wheat kinda place...good luck trying to do that too, as everything is finely balanced, crammed and stacked in to every corner- move one item and it might all come tumbling down like a house of cards! Outside there is usually a selection of plant pots, mirrors, clothing and other odds and ends. Sometimes there'll be a real gem and sometimes it will literally be old junk, but everything will be reasonably priced. Inside really is worth a look too...there's books, furniture and more. An ideal place for bargain hunters who don't mind getting their hands dirty!

Snoopers Paradise is a must-visit for anyone coming to Brighton. Cluttered and bizarre, the shop…read morehas absolutely no apparent order, with bits and bobs scattered and hidden throughout stretching rooms full to the brim of treasures and, well, crap! There's literally something here for everyone - old furniture, jewellery, boxes of tatty old photographs, vintage clothing. Whatever it is you're looking for, Snooper's Paradise is likely to have it in some form or another. It's also likely to stock everything you're not looking for, which is why I especially love taking a stroll around here. First of all, let me state clearly - if you are not a browser, don't even come inside here. You will hate it. If you get stressed out by sales or TK Maxx, then back away slowly from Snooper's Paradise. It is, sadly, not for you. However if, like me, you love a good hoke around - you'll love this place! Many an afternoon can be spent wandering, trying on ridiculous hats, flicking through old books, pining after beautiful bits of furniture that you can't afford and that wouldn't fit in your flat anyway. It's that sort of place - you can get lost in there for hours, caught up in the wonder of it all! In terms of prices, this is obviously a very mixed bag. Some things are expensive, some things are a penny. Such is the way with big shops like this! That being said, there's always a bargain to be found in here somewhere! The staff are helpful and friendly! It always amazes me how they can find and price things in there without getting utterly frazzled by the sheer volume and randomness of the stock. Get down there and have a good rummage - you'll either love it or you'll hate it!

Snoopers Paradise seems to bring out the inner bargain hunter in everyone that steps through the…read moredoor. You walk in empty handed and somehow end up leaving half an hour later with a tin robot, a 1960s chair, an antique mirror or a pair of models legs! Situated halfway down Brighton's fantastic Kensington Gardens, its a sprawling, antique market that has dozens of different stalls offering everything from the brilliant to the bizarre. There are some cool furniture and homeware stalls, handy book and record stalls and a few inspired clothes stall selling great vintage clothes. There's also a lot of very odd bric a brac that I imagine will still be there in 2020!

I don't know what they do to the coffee here, maybe it's powered by voodoo or something, but if you…read morecan get better in Brighton, or elsewhere, you're a better person than me. Just superb. And it's got wifi and powerpoints, and great food and cheery staff. Thumbs up all round from this coffee drinker.

Ground is a groovy-looking, little corner coffee shop up in Kemptown. This place gets packed on a…read moreSunday afternoon even when the weather outside isn't frightful, so it was a bit tough to find a place to sit. After ordering, the bf and I wound up parking our big, bulky selves along a narrow, back counter space in an adjacent, quite small, rectangular room that I'd quickly coined the "laptop library". I think my po-po was almost accidentally backin' up against someone's MacBook Pro. At some point during our stay, I noticed this. So, Mac-dude was either too polite, or too English to tell me to move my goods away from his. Hehe. My perch was directly in front of an open window-ahhhh-so I was able to gaze out at the nearby street and buildings while gulls were crying somewhere off in the distance. The gulls were a very nice touch. What to say about the flat whites? Oh, I don't know. I hate to sound like a "hater", but the bevvies were quite milky with only the slightest hint of espresso to them. Resplendent with fab-o foam art, they looked every bit the part flat white, but didn't really taste like them. What's great about Ground is that the service was spot-on friendly and efficient. I'd be keen on going back and ordering a drip coffee and a snack, and, hopefully, snagging a seat by the window, or, if it's nice out, a seat on the bench out front.