When it comes to furnishing your home, one question that often arises is whether it’s better to have matching furniture or to have an eclectic mix of furniture styles and colours. While there’s no hard and fast rule about mixing and matching furniture styles and palettes, there are several pros and cons to both options, so let’s dive right into the reasons why you should or should not have matching furniture.
Pros of Matching Furniture
1) It creates a cohesive look
Does your living room, dining room or bedroom furniture have to match? The answer is truly dependent on several factors, but the main one that comes into play should be your preference. Matching furniture can create a cohesive, polished look.
Take this medley of the Zoen dining table and Timothy and Jill side chairs as an example. While they have their differences, their common theme of cocoa coloured wood seamlessly blends everything together. This head-turning and jaw-dropping dining area set-up is definitely one to look out for.
If you’re looking to fully match your furniture, particularly when it comes to the focal pieces of the living room or dining room, look for a shop that allows colour customisation for their sofas, loungers and dining chairs. These furniture pieces are often placed close together, so it’s easier to notice if they’re not upholstered in the same material and hue.
Here’s an additional tip: To avoid your matching furniture from looking monotonous, switch things up with interesting furniture pieces in different textures, such as a sofa in bouclé fabric or marble-grain or terrazzo accents in the form of a side table to spice things up.
2) It’s easy to match with existing furniture
Regardless of whether you’re furnishing your bedroom, living room or dining room, utilising matching furniture can simplify the decisions you have to make, especially those that concern colour scheme and style.
3) Reduces visual clutter
If you’re wondering whether your living room furniture should match or not, first consider the amount of space you have. In a smaller space, matching furniture can reduce visual clutter thus providing the illusion of a cleaner, more open space. Coordinating furniture pieces in terms of size, scale and proportion can also contribute to a more balanced and organised appearance. When furniture is appropriately sized for the space and complements each other, it avoids overwhelming the room with oversized or mismatched pieces, thus reducing visual clutter.
Cons of Matching Furniture
1) It can end up looking too uniform
Matching furniture can appear too generic and perhaps even lacking personality. For example, a matching dining table and chair set can look polished but it may also lack visual interest. However, when you mix and match the dining chairs with a dining table in a different style or colour, it can give your dining area a more carefree, lived-in look.
For more ideas on how to achieve this with your own set of mismatched dining chairs, check out our 5 Tips to Harmoniously Mix and Match Dining Room Chairs. A good tip to keep in mind when pairing mismatched furniture is to ensure some commonality between your furniture pieces, such as the material that was used and the overall colour scheme, including the chair’s upholstery.
A great example is the beautiful harmony of the Zenith, Sera, and Kopitiam Rattan side chairs with the Sintered X Shiro dining table. This collage of dining table furniture is made possible because of their shared natural wood colour scheme. Not to mention, the grey cushion fabric and carrara white sintered tabletop that makes the combination that much more dynamic.
2) It’s harder to personalise
Matching furniture also makes it harder to incorporate personal artefacts as it may not pair well with the chosen interior design or colour scheme. When you commit to a matching furniture set, it can limit your ability to mix and match different pieces or experiment with different styles. If you decide to change the overall aesthetic or add new furniture in the future, it may be challenging to integrate new pieces seamlessly without disrupting the matching look. But, there’s always an exception.
With the unique Nick dining table that features black oakwood and clear acrylic table legs, paired with a natural-coloured oakwood tabletop, you are getting the best of three worlds. With a table of this calibre, you can personalise your space over and over again.
Ultimately, the decision to have matching furniture or not entirely depends on the aesthetic you’re looking for and your personal preferences, so don’t feel pressured to conform with what the current interior designing trends recommend. While matching furniture can help you create the cohesive, polished look you dream of, it’s wise to keep things balanced to ensure that you’ll still be able to showcase your personality with your decor and that adding future furniture pieces won’t be a hassle. Regardless of whether you choose to mix-and-match or cohesively-match your furniture all the way, you’ll find everything you need to design your dream home at Comfort Furniture. Check out our wide range of furniture styles for more inspiration today!
