5 Tips for Selecting a Unique Coffee Table That Fits Your Style
Has that old coffee table in your living room lost its luster? Maybe it’s still good, but has it grown with you over the years? Maybe the style just hasn’t kept up with the times, and you are thinking of getting a new one, but you just don’t know where to begin. If this sounds like your current situation, then a unique custom coffee table may be just what your home or apartment needs. Still, there are a few things for you to consider before buying one, because you don’t want to end up in the same situation that you are in now after buying it.
Tip #1 – Find A Coffee Table That Serves The Right Function
As with many things to do with selecting furniture, this will all depend on your living situation. Many families use their coffee tables for more than one thing. Sure, you may plan to entertain a little, but if you have children, for instance, you may consider finding a unique coffee table that has some room for storage. There are many styles for this, including tables that come with slide out baskets and ones where the drawers are large enough to hold many things at once. You might want to get creative and take some time to carefully consider what will serve the best function in your home.
Tip #2 – Set A Realistic Budget Ahead Of Time
Often times, a unique custom coffee table is not a piece that you would end up buying on its own. If you want everything to coordinate within your living spaces, you might end up replacing more than just your old coffee table. In fact, if you want to change the coffee table, then nine times out of ten you were thinking of changing out some of the chairs, maybe the curtains, and other items in your living room as well. This is only natural, but that’s why you need to have a realistic budget in mind ahead of time. You wouldn’t want to upgrade your coffee table and have several other pieces of furniture in the room that stick out like a sore thumb. It makes things a little easier if you break them down into categories.
Category #1 – The Furniture
You will first want to start with the furniture, even though the coffee table was the main thing you wanted to change. Furniture tends to be more expensive to change out versus the curtains or a rug. So, start with listing out all of the other furniture that would need to be changed if you were to purchase a new coffee table for your space. You can write this all out if it makes things easier for you.
Category #2 – The Accessories
Included in the accessory category will be all the little things you choose to design the room with. For example, you may have a curio that has trophies and other items behind a glass window. Or, on the tables that border your couch, there may be lovely custom vases or designer bowls full of candy. The lamps within the space will also in themselves be accessories, which brings me to the final category, the lighting.
Category #3 – The Lighting
This may or may not be the least expensive thing to purchase, but the lighting will determine how the room feels, no matter the style of custom coffee table, wood slab coffee table, or other tables and accessories in the sitting space. If you have a warmer, more country feeling within your spaces, then the lighting should reflect that. You could even use energy efficient bulbs, but in order to adjust the feeling in the room, lamps that have a dimming feature are extremely useful. That way, you can be energy efficient as well as cost efficient, and still remain in style with your new unique coffee table, furniture, and other accessories.
Tip #3 – Choose The Right Shape
When it comes to finding the right shape for your new coffee table, it’s going to depend on your lifestyle and the layout of the room. For example, if you are a single person who lives in a large home, then you have a lot more freedom of choice. You could choose a large wood slab coffee table with beautiful grain, or maybe a nice metal one with a custom wood slab on top depending on the accessories and other items within the living space and how they all coordinate. But, when your lifestyle involves children and/or pets, the shape of the coffee table becomes a little more important.
Many parents want a nice coffee table, but just don’t want to have to worry about anyone getting hurt in the home. The rectangular style coffee tables look nice enough, but if there are small children running in the home than there is a chance they could hit one of the corners of that table. If this is something that you are worried about, then maybe a circular shaped coffee table is right for you. There are many styles, shapes, and colors to choose from and you’ll probably find that you don’t have to sacrifice much when it comes to the look of your place after all.
Tip #4 – Choose The Right Size
In general, you want the coffee table to be about the height of the main couch or other seating that is in the room. Just because it’s a coffee table doesn’t mean you’ll always use it for coffee! No, there may be remote controls that are always there, sometimes you’ll want to eat in the living room, have drinks with friends, etc., and you want to make sure that your coffee table is just a couple of inches lower than the couch. You can also measure it with the other bordering chairs, especially if you bought the furniture as a matching set and all the chairs are about the same height.
Tip #5 – Choose The Right Style
The way that your room is decorated should be what you use to determine the style of coffee table to purchase. For example, if your curtains, couch, and other accessories give off that country feeling, then maybe a wood slab coffee table would be the perfect fit. If you have a more modern feel, such as within a city condo, then maybe a coffee table with metal accents would do the trick. It all depends on whether or not you are going for a vintage look, a formal or informal look, or a modern one.
The style you decide on also has a lot to do with how you scale or match up the furniture with the custom coffee table. For example, if you have a huge couch and loveseat, do not purchase a very small coffee table. Even if it matches the furniture, it doesn’t scale up with the rest of the room. Even if your visitors do not physically lift up the coffee table, they will immediately see how much bulkier and heavier the couch is compared to the petite table.
That is not to say that the smaller table can’t be used if it is stylish, but it would be better paired with the loveseat instead of the couch. Besides, there is no rule that says that you have to have just one table. Maybe the style you are looking for is one that requires a little more flexibility. There are plenty of custom coffee table sets out there that are separated into two or three tables. Depending on your normal activities and what you generally will be using the space for, as long as everything coordinates in the end, having more than one table may bring out the space just the way you like.
