Coffee Tables for a Room Full of Black Furniture
My friend Marguerite walked into my living room in October, looked at the black leather sofa, the black bookshelf, the black metal lamp I’d been very pleased with myself for…
Console Table Behind a Couch: Sizing and What to Put on It
The reputation console tables have is that they’re furniture store filler. You know the vignette. Three matching books nobody’s ever going to read, a glass vase with two dried stems…
A TV Stand Without a TV: Turning It Into Something Else
I got rid of the television in the den in 2019 and left the stand exactly where it was for four months, empty, because I genuinely did not know what…
Coffee Table Styling Rules of Thumb
I counted last week, out of morbid curiosity, because I’d just rearranged my coffee table for the third time in four days and needed to know if that was a…
Protecting a Coffee Table Without Hiding It
My sister walked into the living room, looked at the ring already sitting on the coffee table from somebody’s iced tea, looked at me, and said, “You wrote a whole…
Using the Lower Shelf of a Coffee Table
I was on my knees Tuesday morning, vacuum attachment in one hand, phone flashlight in the other, trying to work out what exactly had colonized the space under my coffee…
Filling the Gaps Beside a Living Room TV Stand
I was on the floor on a Sunday afternoon, untangling three HDMI cables and one very confused ethernet cord that had somehow wrapped itself around a lamp base, when it…
Coffee Table Styling for a Living Room: How Much Is Too Much
I bought an entire coffee table’s worth of decor in one trip to a big box store once, and I mean the whole thing, tray, three “coordinating” candles, a stack…
Glass Coffee Tables: Living With the Fingerprints
I wipe down my coffee table somewhere between six and ten times a day. I know this because I started counting one particularly bad week in February, mostly out of…
Round Coffee Tables: Why Styling Them Is Easier Than It Looks
I was on my knees in my own living room on a Tuesday night, moving the rug for the fourth time that month, when I caught my shin on the…