Mixing Modern and Traditional Furniture: Initial Steps

There are many areas of life where a combination of classic and contemporary designs are desirable, and the realm of home furniture is certainly among them. Many people are regularly looking for ways to combine some of their favorite traditional furniture with today’s modern options, and there are a number of themes you may consider here.

At Amish Crafted Furniture, we’re proud to offer an entire showroom of solid wood furniture made by Amish artisans. Our products often combine traditional aesthetics and structure with modern themes like staining and protection, and we’ve helped a number of clients with this basic theme. In this two-part blog series, we’ll go over some general concepts for mixing traditional and modern home furniture and decor styles.

Choose a “Dominating” Style

While combining these two styles, you’ll first want to choose which one will serve as the “dominant” force in the room. This is the style that will set the tone for everything else and determine how everything else falls into place. You might, for example, have a room with primarily modern furniture but with a few key traditional pieces.

Alternatively, you might want to keep the ratio more balanced. You can even have a room that’s primarily traditional but with a few modern elements added in for flavor. It really depends on your own preferences and what you feel would work best in the space.

Start With Major Pieces First

As you may have already known from prior furniture shopping experiences, it’s often easier to start with the major pieces in a room and then fill in the gaps with smaller items. You’ll want to determine what kind of sofa, chairs, coffee table, end tables, and other larger pieces you’d like before moving on to more minor details.

In terms of mixing traditional and contemporary styles, you might want to start with a classic sofa as your “base.” From there, you can add in more modern elements like accent chairs, coffee tables, and end tables. Or, if you’re going for a more balanced approach, you could choose two sofas – one traditional and one contemporary – and then fill in the rest of the room after.

Harmony or Contrast?

One major theme to consider when mixing traditional and contemporary furniture styles is whether you want everything to look fairly uniform – or if you’d prefer a more stark contrast between the two.

If you’re going for harmony, you might want to keep colors relatively similar throughout the room. For example, you might use a light wood grain finish on your traditional sofa but then choose a coffee table and end tables with a dark wood grain finish.

If you want more contrast, on the other hand, you could use two completely different color schemes. So, you might have a white or cream sofa with black coffee table and end tables.

In part two of our series, we’ll go over some more themes here. For more on this, or to learn about any of our solid wood home furniture, speak to the staff at Amish Crafted Furniture today.