House Furniture Styles
- Modern furniture is known for clean, simple lines.Aaron Graubart/Photodisc/Getty Images
Your home expresses who you are, and the furniture you choose to put inside it is a big part of that expression. Your furniture style can evoke your love of the past, your desire to avoid clutter, your love of beauty, or your enjoyment of cocooning with family and close friends. While furniture styles have changed a great deal during history, today's furniture mostly falls into one of several broad style categories. - Traditional furniture borrows from styles of Europe and the past without copying them exactly, using elements such as the graceful proportions and elaborate detailing of the old Queen Anne's or Chippendale styles. It is the most formal style seen in today's furniture and tends to use dark woods, such as mahogany and cherry, and rich fabrics such as damask, jacquard and brocade.
- Casual furniture reflects a less formal lifestyle and includes practical elements such as easy-to-clean fabrics. Wooden furniture is often weathered or painted, with oak, pine and maple often used. Color palettes include neutral colors with touches of vibrant, often tropical, colors. Overstuffed sofas and other very comfortable furniture show up frequently in casual decorating. One subgroup of casual furniture is coastal furniture, which often incorporates nautical or seashore themes into decoration, and frequently uses wicker or rattan instead of wood.
- Country style is casual by definition as well, but with an overall homespun quality that makes itself known through choices of fabrics and wood finishes. Ash, maple, pine and oak are often used for wooden furniture, sometimes with distressed or painted finishes. Accessories evoke a homemade quality and include items such as throw rugs, needlepoint or embroidery, pottery and baskets. Antiques sometimes stand side by side with reproductions. Styles subsumed within the overall country style include French provincial and English country.
- Modern and contemporary furniture has clean, uncluttered lines, and is sometimes almost architectural in its effect. Modern furniture often incorporates steel, glass and chrome, many times with bold color choices. Other subcategories within this style include Art Deco, with its streamlined shapes and mirrored surfaces; Arts and Crafts, with artisan craftsmanship and rich oaks and leathers; and Mid-Century modern, often with a Scandinavian influence, with its lack of ornamentation and asymmetrical shapes.
- The eclectic style combines elements from all furniture styles, boldly balancing the modern against the traditional. However, true eclectic style constitutes not a mere jumbling of random furniture and accessories together but a deliberate attempt to choose unique pieces and collectibles to create a one-of-a-kind effect. Often, colors or shapes are used to create a sense of unity in a room rather than using one style of furniture to do so.
