Furniture

Re: Furniture

• formerlyGDaisy09 member

  

  July 2015

  think about how you use your furniture when selecting colors and fabrics. we got an off-white microfiber sofa 5 years ago, and now it looks terrible (I've since bought a slip cover). any tiny little stain or water-mark shows on lighter fabrics. and the microfiber clings to everything, especially hair. so even a darker colored fabric wouldn't work for us because there would just be pet hair all over it. 

  
  

  do you, or will you have kids? consider a heavier duty fabric so it can stand-up to use/abuse and cleaning. if you like the clean-crisp look look for shapes with clean lines, you can always slip-cover something if you want a lighter fabric. 

  
  

  we're religating our 5 year old couches to our new basement room when it's done and purchasing more durable furniture for the living room. 

  Me: 28 H: 30

  Married 07/14/2012

  TTC #1 January 2015

  BFP! 3/27/15 Baby Girl!! EDD:12/7/2015

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• hoffse member

  

  July 2015

  Spend some time looking at furniture/decor photos on houzz.com.  You can save your favorites as you browse and then go back through the photos you saved to see if any patterns start to emerge in terms of things you are attracted to.

  
  

  What you will also notice is that designers don't really do matchy-matchy, and especially not through an entire house.  You might have a couple pieces in one room match each other and then a couple more pieces that coordinate.  But designers almost never match everything.  

  
  

  For example, in our living room we have a couch and two chairs.  The chairs match each other but not the couch.  We also have a coffee table, two side tables, and a bench under a big window.  The coffee table and side tables match each other.  The bench doesn't match anything else in the room.  The idea is to introduce different textures, colors, etc. in one room.

  
  

  We just bought a brown wood table for our breakfast room post-kitchen-remodel.  We're going to buy chairs that don't match.  Probably red chairs.

  
  

  Compare this to our bedroom where we have a traditional bedroom set.  Our bedroom is kind of boring, and I've started moving pieces from it to other parts of the house to mix things up a bit.

  
  

  With respect to quality, be realistic about the wear and damage a piece might get.  We spent less than $200 on the breakfast room table because we know it's going to get beat up.  We will use it for most meals and if we figure it's a place where future kids are likely to color, do arts and crafts, whatever.  We spent quite a bit more on the coffee/side tables for the living room because that's a formal room, and we spend hardly any time there.

  
  

  If you have pets or plan to have kids, your furniture will get some abuse.  Personally, I would be very careful about where you spend serious money on furniture until kids are older and/or pets are trained.

  
  

  Even in rooms where you don't spend much time now, pick your battles.  We splurged on the coffee/side tables because we thought they would make the room look high-end (Crate & Barrel) but ended up buying a couch from IKEA because I wanted a white couch.  The IKEA white couch looks pretty similar to the Pottery Barn white couch and costs about 75% less.  Plus, IKEA sells their white slipcovers for about $30-$40 each, so when our current one gets destroyed with kids or whatever, replacing it is no big deal.  We have a spare slipcover in the closet.  The coffee/side tables are travertine and are sealed so they can take some spills, etc.  A white couch really can't handle serious spills without getting stained.  So we didn't invest a lot there.  We have had the white couch for about 8 months now and have sat on it probably less than 10 times so it still looks great.  The cats love it, but they don't claw it.  I just lint roll the cat hair every few days to keep it looking clean.  Once we have kids though, all bets are off.

  
  

  White furniture may or may not work for your lifestyle.  You'll just have to think about what your habits are and what your plans are. 

  

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• Erikan73 member

  

  July 2015

  For actual furniture, I personally would go dark, but I also have 3 small dogs that get dirty when they go outside after it rains. You don't have to do the same color furniture in every room. Feel free to mix it up some. But I would try to stay with the same style through the house. Like I wouldn't do a one room all modern and then the room next to it rustic. One thing that my husband and I are doing is that we got books fromt he paint store that show what colors compliment each other. So we are picking colors that compliment each other. Don't worry about the trim. Focus on the color of the walls, and you can always add white to a dark couch with pillows or use white picture frames on the walls.

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• jessica490 member

  

  July 2015

  Good ideas. I do have a pinterest board that I've been saving things on...I have Houzz too but I find their pictures to be very high end looking, but I do look.

  We currently have a crème colored couch and it's very dirty in some spots so I will never get a light colored couch again. It's disgusting. Something with a slip cover would work great or even a gray colored couch.

  We don't plan on having kids and we have a small dog that doesn't shed so not many messes to be made from the perspective.

  
  

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• Xstatic3333 member

  

  July 2015

  The approach we took is to accumulate a few pieces we really liked and then build the rest of each room around them. That said, our style is a little eclectic and I'm not sure that approach will work quite as well if you're going traditional.

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