How to Combine Traditional and Modern Furniture With Style

Are you in love with both traditional and modern furniture styles? Do you feel like you can’t decide between those two? The great thing is you don’t have to settle for only one, you can have both of them.

Combining traditional and modern furniture can be successfully done and it can look stylish. However, like with everything there needs to be a balance. Mixing traditional and modern styles without any planning can turn out to be a complete mess. 

To avoid creating a complete mess in your home, you need to know how to combine these styles. So, check out some ways to combine traditional and modern furniture and how to do it with style.

1. Choose your Primary Style

Before you start combining furniture, decide which style will be your dominant style, or your primary style – either modern or traditional. 

This will help you not overdo it with both styles, one will be your primary style and the other will give space accents. Too much of both styles will make the space feel crowded and it will seem as they are fighting for attention.

Once you have this figured out, you can move on to combining and mixing furniture. The good thing about mixing and matching modern and traditional furniture is that it can work in any room of the house.

2. Create Harmony

Once you decided which style will lead the space and which will accentuate it, you can move on to creating cohesion and harmony in the space. This can be easily done by paying attention to the details of your furniture pieces. 

The shape and textures and materials of traditional furniture can pair nicely with modern design. For example, antique coffee tables or side tables with wooden legs can pair nicely with modern sofas or armchairs that also have similar wooden legs of similar stain colour.

On the other hand, if you have older furniture, you can easily reupholster or re-stain it to make it more cohesive with your modern pieces. 

Similarly, you can play around with wall colours and art. For example, if you’re redecorating your bedroom, go with muted grey tones for walls and decorate them with black and white art. The grey will give a modern feel to the bedroom so you can decorate it with a more traditional bed frame and bedside table and even a traditional rug.

The whole point of the cohesive design is to create a harmonious and balanced look to your space. 

3. Or Create Contrast

You can also play around with contrast as well. Not everyone will be happy with a cohesive and toned-down look, some people prefer a bit of bold contrast in their lives.  

If you’re looking for contrast, you can easily create it with colours and textures. Rugs, cushions and pillows, curtains, and other accent pieces can bring much-needed contrast to any space.

If your living room feels a bit too cold even with a lovely traditional sofa and contemporary marble coffee table, you can easily give it interest with colourful, textured cushions.

A dining room with a modern dining table and traditional chairs can be nicely contrasted with a colourful oriental rug.

Simply, inject a bit of pattern, colour, or texture into your space and you’ll immediately create contrast and give a completely different feeling to the room.

4. The Scale of the Furniture Matters

Mixing and matching contemporary and traditional furniture works, but you need to consider the scale and proportion of it as well. You can’t pair antique massive furniture with small, dainty contemporary pieces – the older pieces will overpower contemporary making them look out of place.

When combining furniture, the scale is very important. Try to combine pieces of the same height and size. Also, it’s important to consider the size of the room. Larger furniture will crowd and swamp the smaller spaces, while the smaller furniture pieces will be lost in larger rooms. 

So, when mixing furniture styles think about their size as well, and the size of the space they will be laced into.

5. Distribution of the Furniture

When mixing furniture styles from different eras it’s important to distribute them properly. This means that instead of placing everything in one big pile, you should arrange them according to their styles and eras in order to emphasize them. For example, one side of the room should have traditional furniture and the other modern.

On the other hand, if you have an open space floor plan, mixing styles is acceptable. In the dining area, mix the chairs of contemporary style with a traditional table or vice versa. Similarly, the living room area should have that same concept. Don’t overwhelm the space with too much of both styles, but distribute them equally throughout the whole space.

If you were wondering whether mixing furniture styles is acceptable, now you have the answer. It is, but only when following these rules and planning in advance. By mixing modern and traditional furniture and accessories you can create a cohesive and unique space that will reflect your personality and style.