styling secrets – coffee table

A coffee table is an essential element in the main living area of your home. When you think of this space, immediately the mind goes to ‘something to sit on’, and ‘something to centre those seats around’. Cue your coffee table.

It’s a practical piece, and something you can splurge on, pick up at a thrift store and up-cycle yourself, purchase flat pack from a store – whatever. But once you’ve found the right one for you, and set it in its place, it tends to become a sort of dumping ground – a home for your remote controls and paperwork. But it has so much more potential than this.

It can be styled and beautifully executed. After all, it is going to be in the centre of a seating space – and it can even become a focal point for the entire room. A way to draw everything around it in so that the room feels as though it is all connected and spatially thought out.

Everyone obviously has their own personal tastes, but I do think there are some fundamentals in coffee table styling. For example, flowers, or at least something natural. Pot pourri, natural vase fillers, a pot plant, pine cones.. just something natural. My personal preference is flowers. It adds life and colour to the room as well as creating texture and height on the flat surface of the coffee table.

Other examples include candles, books, decorative objects and trays to arrange these on.
Candles add softness and warmth to the arrangement. They create a homely feel and a coffee table is the perfect place to house these whether they are lit or not. Books must be what are known as “coffee table books”. Not novels. Books that are interesting, and usually based on a theme. Books that you would like to flick through to look at pictures, or ones that inspire conversation between you and your guests. They are usually large and hardback, can be about fashion, interiors, gardening, specific decades – anything really! But make sure you are interested in them. They have to be useful for you too.
Decorative objects are the ‘fluffy’ parts of the whole arrangement. They can be anything from ornaments to mini sculptures. They are another way of adding colour or texture or general aesthetic interest. And finally, trays. This one is quite new to me. But having worked in home retail now for over 2 years, I have come across a LOT of decorative trays. And they are gorgeous. The perfect way to house little objects on the top of your table – or even a new home for those remote controls!