Living Room Side Table: What Should Be Within Reach
Side tables have a reputation as the furniture equivalent of an afterthought. You buy the sofa first, you agonize over the rug, you spend actual weeks deciding on curtains, and…
Small Coffee Table: Making a Little Surface Work Hard
Small coffee tables have a reputation for being the consolation prize of furniture, the thing you buy when you couldn’t fit the real coffee table, the one with the ottoman…
Living Room Display Cabinet Ideas
I bought my first proper display cabinet in 1994, a monstrous oak thing with brass hardware that the delivery men hated me for, and I filled it, within about a…
TV Stand Shelves: What Goes On Them Besides the TV
I counted it once, out of boredom more than curiosity, and the number stuck with me: I open or reach into my own TV stand shelves about nine times a…
What Goes in a Bowl on a Coffee Table
Renata walked into my apartment two weekends ago, stopped dead in front of the coffee table, and said, “Chloe. Is that a bowl of rocks.” Not a question really. More…
Decorative Bowl Fillers for a Coffee Table, Season by Season
I dropped my keys into the bowl on my coffee table last Tuesday and heard them land on top of a receipt from CVS, a hair tie, one AirPod that…
What to Put on a Coffee Table: Height, Texture and Restraint
Coffee tables have a reputation problem, and it’s the same one that ruins pantries and closets and every other surface that gets photographed for design blogs: they’re supposed to look…
Pink Sofa Pillows for a Grown Up Room
Everybody thinks a pink sofa is a phase. A twenty five year old’s first apartment purchase, something you grow out of the way you grow out of fairy lights strung…
Matching Pillows to a Gray Sofa Without Playing It Safe
The received wisdom on gray sofa pillows is that you play it safe: white, ivory, maybe a “brave” charcoal if you’re feeling reckless, and you call the room finished. I…
Dark Blue Sofa Pillows: A Softer Take on the Black Couch Look
I own eleven pillows for one three seat sofa. Eleven. I counted them properly last Tuesday while I was supposed to be grading a stack of persuasive essays about whether…