As you know, I love purple. I painted my kitchen cabinets a deep, bright purple. Come springtime, I have plans to repaint the trim on my house a sort of eggplant color that will eventually highlight a sort of pumpkin color. Go, Team Purple! So when I came across a beautiful purple chair at a local consignment shop, I was inspired to see what else is out there. Here’s a sampling:
I was all set to post about a cute little crafting project that lets you make a ‘please remove your shoes’ sign because, hey, no one wants beach sand or road sand tracked all over their floors. But as I was poking around the Intertubes wondering what else I could include to flesh things out a little, I happened upon a much radder DIY project that is as cool as the other was country-ish.
I won’t say this is an easy DIY Pacman couch project — think woodworking and upholstery shaping, not Mod Podge and a couple of minutes with a cordless drill. But for those with the time, energy, space, and materials money to give it a go, I say try it! Then (whether or not you’re successful) send me a link so I can feature it here, of course.
Anthropomorphic furniture? Yes, please! How adorable are these chairs? They make me want to sit down and stay a while.
The Face Chair, designed by Bora Çakilkaya for P-ARCH, is definitely cute and right up my alley, whether you’re talking about the happy chair or the sad chair or the chair that looks a little irritated.
There’s not much out there about the Istanbul-based Cakilkaya, but I can’t help but think he must be a pretty playful fellow to have made simple seating into something so fun.
Whatever one calls them — hall trees, entry benches, or furniture for the foyer or mudroom — there’s nothing quite like a bench where one can remove waterlogged boots and ice encrusted mittens after slogging through a weather-ridden world. Those who have the space for a hall bench or a hall tree are lucky in that they can keep street detritus corralled in an easy-to-clean spot in their homes. The rest of us have to find the space, but making room for at least a hall bench is oh so worth it. Right now, I’m digging on these hall benches from German firm Car Möbel.
The pretty blue color on this hall bench makes it perfect for not only an entryway, but also a kid’s room, where it could double as a toy box and a spot to curl up and read on chilly Sundays.
Clean lines and neutral white make this hall bench versatile. At home in modern or beachy decor, it offers plenty of seating and storage potential… think a spot for shoes or a place to stash baskets of hats, gloves, and scarves.
Great for a beach house or country cottage, this hall bench is everything the one above is with the addition of a sweet wicker storage basket that keeps clutter out of sight (and possibly also out of mind).
Hall benches are country? No way! This one would feel right at home in a mod and minimalist house or apartment as a temporary space to stash things like those organic apples from the farmers market.
unfinished wood means this hall bench could work in a variety of settings, though I like it in a primarily white space without a lot of other furniture. It would also be sweet in a dressing closet (for those who have them) or a laundry room, so one could sit and fold in peace.
Regardless of how you feel about the legitimacy of the sixth installment of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, I think we can all agree that this is a pretty sweet chair.
This take one the iconic Egg chair designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1958 is being produced in a limited run of, you guessed it, just 42 numbered chairs. The design pays homage to the Hitchhikers Guide series with a beautifully rendered hand-finished embroidered exploding earth on the back. The front of the chair features optical white hide with a cowhide seat cushion (which frankly, I could do without, but I suppose one could remove it).
I’ve recently been reading The Book of Games: Strategy, Tactics & History by Jack Botermans. It’s a look at international games and their place in culture and history, from The Royal Game of Ur, one of the oldest board games ever found, to the much more modern Mastermind. Naturally all that reading about games got me to thinking about games and furniture, which is how I found this super sweet set of Scrabble couches.
Crafted by Stephen Reed for employees in the London offices of Bloomberg financial services, it’s not only the couch cushions that, ahem, get into the game. The couches themselves are stylized to look like Scrabble tile racks, i.e., those easily upended wooden things where one hides one’s tiles.
I get the overall concept, but frankly I’m much more interested in the Scrabble tile pillows than I am in the Scrabble-racks-turned-seating. The look uncomfortable, at least where the back of the knee is concerned… and possibly also for shorter people, whose legs might not quite reach the floor.
You can steal this look with Scrabble tile pillows from Etsy seller Pillow Happy!
Plastic isn’t just for deck chairs anymore!
Kartell’s Papyrus chair was designed by the Bouroullec brothers as a modern interpretation of an archetypal Antique Rush Chair. The modern Polycarbonate material enables the design to have structure, texture, translucency, and color.
This chair is a progression of both design and technology from the original Classic Lord Yo Chair, through the Dr No Chairs, to this amazing piece. Dr Yes is a one piece molding chair.
The totally unique MYTO chair designed by Konstantin Grcic for PLANK is a cantilever chair manufactured entirely of BASF Ultradur high-speed indoor/outdoor plastic. And it’s recyclable, though why you’d want to toss it is beyond me.
Finally, the Lizz Chair is manufactured in a single piece using a gas blowing mold technique. It has a squared contour, a generous wide seat, and low comfortable backrest. It is extremely stable, shockproof, and scratch resistant, and it can be used outdoors.
Want to class up your camping area or backyard patio? Maybe you live in a dorm and want to get away from the whole neon inflatable chair and beanbag thing.
A nice blow-up Chesterfield might just be what you’re looking for… if you have more money than you know what to do with, that is.
The surprisingly elegant looking Blofield Inflatable Chesterfield Sofa is portable and crafted from the same stuff life rafts are made of. Having five very pointy cats, however, I hesitate to call it truly durable, at least when placed in the home of pet owners. Or people with children.
The same goes for the Blofield Inflatable Chesterfield Armchair, which admittedly also looks quite fancy when viewed from far away.
Still, I’d skip it, considering you could get a serviceable set of living room furniture for the same price.
Summertime may feel like it’ll last forever once it gets going, but the truth is that it’s winding down ever so slowly. I like to keep summer in my life all year long with fun colors. Like lime! It’s so summery — when do we have limeade? Key lime pie? Summertime, of course. If you want to ensure that your summer last, in some capacity, all year long, try these limey goodies on for size:
This Ultra Soft Studio Lime Chair would look as good in the living room as it would in a home office or the corner of a bedroom. I especially like the generous-yet-cozy curves.
The obstacles one encounters when furnishing smaller homes are many. As wonderful as itty-bitty flats and miniscule houses can be, the reality is that most furniture is scaled for the comparatively palatial homes that remain en vogue in the US. As reader jojokaffe recently found out, the makers of things like couches either assume either that their buyers have large living rooms or that buyers who want smaller furnishings are only interested in modern pieces. Wrong and wrong.
My own living room is by no means large, but it does accommodate a full-size couch and a few chairs, so I had my pick of the furniture litter. However, as I’ve mentioned, I did once live in a tiny little flat in NYC, and my roommate and I did not furnish it in the modern style. I suppose our style might have been called “scavenged,” but that’s beside the point. Instead of a couch that would have overwhelmed our small space, we filled our living room with a love seat, a not-quite Louis chair, an armchair, and some cute side tables.
If you need to do the same and are currently shopping around, Furniture for Small Spaces published this helpful — but by no means exhaustive — sizing chart:
Other than that, fitting a sofa into a small space is a matter of downsizing certain features. A couch with no arms or slim arms and one with no legs or hidden legs will usually look more natural in a small room, even if it is taking up a great deal of that room. No matter what style of sofa you prefer, look to avoid excessive curves that widen the sofa without adding usable seating space.
(And speaking of accents for small spaces, don’t forget to enter to win a 3′x5′ FREE hand-woven jute rug!)
