9 Tips For Styling a Coffee Table

Just spotted this amazing vignette on Tumblr and decided that today’s post will be about styling a coffee table.

Usually coffee table is located in front of a sofa and in the middle of a living room naturally becoming its focal point. Leaving it pristine empty is a huge mistake as beautifully styled table is able to distract from design faults, create a certain mood and demonstrate to your guests your impeccable taste.  Coming to decorating part, many people are stuck on what to put on a coffee table, how to organise these things and how to make the overall vignette look pretty.

Here are 9 little tricks, which I hope will help you during the process.

1. Use layers

This design principle can be applied not only for styling a coffee table but for decorating the whole room. Layers create interest and give depth, making us intuitively eager to know what is hidden behind. Stack books, rather then putting only one or scattering them all around the surface. Use trays – it is a wonderful way to create a powerful visual impact as items grouped together will enhance the effect of each other. Trays also make the table look very neat and organised.

2. Pick the theme

Now about what items to put on a coffee table.  Instead of agglomerating diverse objects, think about the theme you want to create. Whether it is a continuation of the overall style (Boho, Eastern, country, romantic, etc.) or theme inspired by the season (autumn, winter, spring or summer), items united by one motif will create more harmonious and natural look.

3. Match by colours

It is not enough to pick the similar items, but it is also important to make sure they match each other by colour and go well with the overall colour scheme of a room. In that sense,  think about the colour concept of your vignette first and then start sourcing the objects.

4. Create pyramids

When stacking books remember about the pyramid principle: books of the same size put on the top of each other will look boring. Instead, go from bigger ones at the bottom to smaller ones and finish with an interesting object on the top (this can be anything: from a coral or small plant to interesting figurine or candle).

5. Think three dimensions

When styling a coffee table it is important to combine objects of different sizes and heights. Thus books belong to horizontal dimension, while vases and flowers to vertical – now put them all together for achieving a maximum effect.

6. Add flowers

Flowers will help to bring life to overall composition. This doesn’t have to be necessarily an ordinary bouquet, think of natural greenery and succulents in small cute pots.

7. Bring nature in

So many times we hear that living in large cities destroys our instinctive connection with nature. The easiest way to restore it is using in your home decor natural materials and elements: think of adding to your vignette shells, corals, sea stars, cones or chestnuts.

8. Books and magazines

This is another popular, and I would say indispensable part of table vignette. Remember though, that this is not supposed to be your book for the night, but rather design element and opportunity to impress your guests. The usual choice for the table display are books and magazines about design, architecture, travel, museums – something that will entertain your guest with beautiful pictures while you are busy making coffee for them.

9. Think romance

Nothing adds so much romance and charm to any vignette as beautiful luminaries and candles….