Best Tips on How to Style Your Coffee Table

How people style their coffee table can say a lot about their personalities. It’s a great avenue to show your personal interests and things you think is beautiful to look at. They are often at the center of all your furniture and, therefore, at the center of the time spend in your living room. Your coffee table could be the very focal point of your living room area, so do not neglect it. There are so many ways you might style a coffee table that it can get a little confusing. So, following a few simple rules can help guide you on how to set up your table’s composition.

Round coffee tables are great because they break up the very linear look of the furniture surrounding them. The round edges are great for contrasting the straight lines and geometric shapes of your couches, chairs, and other architectural features you might have in the room. The downside to this shape is that it could be a bit trickier to style them because you cannot rely on lines to guide where to place objects. However, once you get the hang of composition, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.                             

Conversely, you can use rectangular coffee tables to break away from round shapes. If you already have a couch or accent chairs with round edges, rectangular coffee tables would be the way to go. The advantage of having this shape is that it can look sleeker and more modern. Straight lines make things look cleaner and more orderly.                  

Having a coffee table book is a great way to fill space on the surface. You can have just one piece or a few stacked on top of each other. Just make sure that you don't stack too many because that could end up looking cluttered. If you have a collection of coffee table books, select one to three that you want to put on display. The rest can be displayed on your bookshelf or stored somewhere else.                                       

Coffee table books help ground the space in terms of composition, but they are also a good way to show your personality and interests. You can stack objects onto the book to create elevation for some items. This gives your coffee table more height variety, so it looks more dynamic. If you want easy access to your books because you like to leaf through them quite frequently, they could simply stand alone as a stack. Be mindful of the cover’s design and color palette and try to put the most aesthetically pleasing one on top.

Making small clusters of objects helps give your coffee table a playful look. The composition will look more balanced with an odd number of items. In particular, three is a good number because more than that could look a little too crowded and cluttered.

Remember that the items you cluster together don’t have to be the same. Some examples of small objects you can place on your coffee table are a small vase, bowls, sculptures, et. cetera. You can mix and match these items to see what fits together best. When placing them, you can try to create an S-curve, a triangle, or simply line them up. A curved composition creates more movement and looks more feminine, while a linear composition makes it look more masculine and modern.

A tray is always a great option because it corals things and makes them seem organized. You can play with the material your tray is made of. It’s better if there’s a bit of contrast between the material of your coffee table and the tray you place on top. For example, you can mix marble, glass, and metallics to create a modern or contemporary look. You can mix wood, leather, warm metals, and woven textures to create a cozier environment. Again, don’t be afraid to mix and match to find exactly what your style is. You want some contrast between the materials without creating a clash in colors or prints.                                                                                                      

When deciding what to put on the tray, we go back to the rule of threes. Take some objects with unique shapes and textures to add visual interest. To create some cohesiveness among the objects, try to choose some from the same color palette. So, you can have a vase, a candle, and a sculpture that look completely different but still have the same color scheme, so nothing looks out of place.                                                                           

Starting with pottery that you love in interesting shapes always works. Keep the material of your pots, planters, and vases in mind, and make sure they don’t clash with your coffee table or tray. You can place your biggest plant off-center to make room for other things you may want on your coffee table. Then you can take a tray and group smaller plants or objects together. Plants breathe life into a space, so having them on your coffee table can completely transform your cluster of inanimate objects to something more playful and dynamic.