Living In Style: How To Add Accent Furniture In Your Home
September 2, 2024
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Luxury-styled interior is a little difficult to describe—many think of luxury as more of an experience than as fixed elements or characteristics that make up the interior of a home. Loosely, luxury designs can be thought of as opulent, grand, spacious, expensive, sophisticated—embodying the very meaning of the word luxury: “a condition of abundance or great ease and comfort” or “an indulgence in something that provides pleasure, satisfaction, or ease” as defined by the Merriam-Webster English dictionary.
Today, there are many luxury designs like neoclassical, Victorian, modern and contemporary, each unique with their own characteristics. Neoclassical styles are most influenced by Greek and Roman architecture in the mid-18th century, with features like panelling and moulding to imitate classical columns, wood materials in furniture and symmetrical shapes. The Victorian-style incorporates textured fabrics, decorative ironwork trimming and dark rich colours, while contemporary design favours sleek, clean lines elaborated by metal accents and a neutral colour palette or black and white.
These different styles are widely different, but all of them confidently exude a luxurious feel. Luxury-style interior is more of an experience than it is a set of fixed elements or characteristics—you can choose what is luxurious according to your taste, and build a home that is neoclassical luxurious, Victorian luxurious or modern luxurious—it’s all up to you!
While luxury-styled homes are an extravagance of richness and abundance, you do not necessarily need to have a huge budget to create a home of luxury. There are many simple things you can do to add luxe to your living spaces in Singapore.
Light up your home with decorative light fixtures. Floor lamps, table lamps, and ceiling lights can bring focus to different objects and change the ambience of the room. Hanging lights above the dining table or adorning your shelf with a table lamp underline a room’s beauty and design, as opposed to mere functionality.
Use art pieces to add colour and texture to your home. The colours of the artwork may complement your furniture, for example, the gold in a painting can accentuate the gold present in the other furniture in the room, creating a more expensive or sophisticated look.
When choosing colours, you might go for a neutral grey, cream, or white, while boldly mixing it up with loud patterns on centre rugs, plush cushions or accent furniture. Victorian-style homes enjoy highly patterned fabrics and deep-coloured velvet materials—showcasing a confidently luxurious design.
Set up larger pieces of furniture in the room, compared to many pieces of smaller furniture that can make a room feel messier and more cluttered. One key element of luxury designs is spaciousness, so in this case, less is more. Luxury furniture in Singapore may incorporate elements like deep-coloured velvets, dark wood, patterned fabrics, clean metal framings, and gold-pleated or metal finishes to communicate indulgence or extravagance.
Overall, adding decorative fixtures and accessories and choosing the right colours, patterns, materials and sizes of your furniture can help you turn your ordinary home into a luxurious one.
Dining chairs do more for you stylishly than you can imagine. Mixing and matching different fabrics creates a fresher and more interesting look, and arranging different types of chairs at the dining table also improves style and beauty. Apart from that, there are so many other factors to consider like size, style, comfort and practicality. We share some useful guidelines in mind to help you pick the best dining chairs to complement your luxury home.
Dining tables are usually about 28 – 30 inches tall, and the standard height of a dining chair is 18 – 23 inches. To be sure, measure the height of your dining room table before you head to the store and, if your table differs from the standard height, choose a chair that is 12 inches shorter than the table instead. A 12-inch height difference gives enough legroom and a comfortable height for dining. Around the tabletop, measure 24-inch spaces for each chair to plan how many you buy. A 72-inch long table, for instance, fits six people (and six dining chairs) pleasantly.
Here comes the fun… picking chairs that look great in your home! Most people living in Singapore choose the exact same designs for all dining chairs that go around the table. While you can do this, you can also consider playing around with different colours and patterns. The key is to have both contrast and consistency—like having chairs that are different shades of the same colour, or keeping consistent colours but changing up the patterns instead.
Armed chairs occupy more space than armless chairs, which means that you have the luxury of choosing armed chairs if your dining table is large enough. More often, armed chairs are used as head chairs, or chairs at the head of the table, and armless chairs are used for the length of the table. As armed chairs are larger and heavier, they draw focus to the ends of the table and look visually pleasing. If you have older people using the table often, armed chairs may be a better option because it provides support for standing up and sitting down.
All in all, look out for dining chairs that complement each other and the other furniture in the room, but also don’t be afraid to play around with different styles and find something that is uniquely you!
More often than not, homeowners in Singapore pay more attention to getting the right sofa, even though the coffee table takes (literal) centre stage in the living room. It is where we conveniently set down our cups, magazines, books, laptops, keys—sometimes, where we have our meals while watching the television, or the platform on which we secretly kick up our feet to relax after a long day. The coffee table plays a huge role, practically and visually, and choosing the right one can bring new life to your living room space. Here, we share the various coffee table styles that match powerfully with other elements in your living room!
Rectangular coffee tables go easily with a regular sofa and work well for living rooms with a smaller sofa-to-television distance, allowing you more room to navigate around the table and between table and sofa. A general rule of thumb is that a coffee table should be at least half, but no more than two thirds, the length of your sofa. Since standard sofas are longer in length, rectangular coffee tables serve as the perfect fit.
Round coffee tables pair well with sectionals, also known as modular sofas, because these sofas are shorter in length. With the little corner space created by the L-shaped section, round tables fit snugly in! Even with the curves of the round coffee table, when topped with solid wood or glass and finished with gold, silver or chrome, it maintains a simple, clean and modern look—fit for a Singapore home of luxury.
What are nesting coffee tables? Nesting coffee tables are tables that overlap each other, fashioning more creative displays that play with different height and depth. These tables also serve a practical function—if you’re short of space in the living room, tuck the lower nesting table under the taller one, and there they will neatly stand, occupying only the room of a single table. Depending on its size and shape (rectangular, round, square), you can pair them with any type of sofa, according to the half or two-third rule.
Sideboards are flexible and functional, offering streamlined room for storage while working as elements of beauty in our homes. Apart from the living room, sideboards are popularly used in dining rooms, bedrooms, and hallways too (who doesn’t love sleek storage space?), providing even more display and design opportunities to play around with. These medium-height cabinets can be used to place flowers, lamps, family pictures; they also draw attention to the wall spaces that lie above it, so you can creatively hang up large paintings, mirrors, or set up decorative lights above it. To help you make the most out of the furniture’s sophisticated design, here are some tips on how to choose the best sideboard for your home!
Sideboards (or buffets), placed in dining rooms, are used to store plates, utensils, fancy chinaware, wine glasses, table linens, silverware and serving platters—all that you need for a regular family meal or inviting guests over. Arrange fruits, candles, jugs or plants on top of the buffet, and you can even hang paintings over it to create a more stylish look.
Consider other furniture like the dining table and chairs when positioning the buffet, so that you leave enough room for comfortable and easy navigation around the table. Having at least 24 inches from buffet to chair is a safe distance for keeping the room’s spaciousness.
For living rooms, you can easily place the sideboard against an empty wall and fill up space on and above it. Consider the sideboard’s depth and height—the depth of the sideboard is usually 15 – 18 inches, thin and elongated so that it fits nicely without taking up too much room. Shorter sideboards that are without legs or have very short legs can double as television consoles for regular-sized flats in Singapore, providing enough wall space for the television and neat storage for media consoles and other items.
To section the living room, place a cabinet behind the sofa. The back of the sofa and the sideboard should be aligned at the same height, or the sideboard may be slightly shorter than the sofa, to maintain the room’s flow. Visually, this gently partitions the room into two areas, allowing you to assign different functions to each area, for example, lounging and study space, or lounging and dining space.
With shorter length sideboards like the Germaine Sideboard, Allanah Sideboard or Tevora Sideboard, you can mix it up by placing two identical cabinets side by side to form a lengthened one. Aesthetically pleasing because of the symmetry that a repeated arrangement creates, it brings surprising elegance to your living room.
‘Open’ sideboards are ones that have no doors or glass doors so that the items in the cabinet are beautifully displayed to anyone in the room. ‘Closed’ sideboards, on the other hand, have either swinging or sliding doors, gracefully keeping stored items hidden from plain view. You want to choose an open sideboard only to show off items like books, chinaware, wine glasses, or ornaments—definitely best to stick to opaque doors if you are storing items of necessity.
Dining chairs, armchairs, sofas, even bar stools are no stranger to most people living in Singapore. The accent chair, the most interesting chair in the room, seems to be missing out on its deserved spotlight. These pieces, used for more than simple function, provide emphasis—the bold purpose of this chair is to insert colour and style into a living space. These beautiful pieces of furniture fit perfectly in hallways, bedrooms and most commonly, living rooms. Stay with us to find out more about how you can use accent chairs to accentuate your home spaces!
The accent chair is best used to add an interesting flavour of contrast while reinforcing the other elements in the room like colours, patterns or materials.
You might choose the colour of the accent chair to differ from the main set of colours in the room, and a good guideline to follow is to choose a complementary colour. If the room is mostly a deeper blue, you can go with rustic orange; if other furniture and accessories in the room are mostly a light green colour, you can choose an easy pink to match. For luxury homes with deeper and darker colours, a dark cranberry red might go with deep emerald green. Use a colour wheel if you need more ideas—complementary colours are those on the opposite ends of the wheel and can be adjusted according to tints and shades.
Patterns on your accent chairs also can make a fashionable statement. Pair a boldly patterned piece with the other plain furniture in the room, while keeping the colour themes of the room. For example, a patterned black and white accent chair can go well with a dark grey or black sofa, or a patterned red accent chair can match the deep red sofa and paintings surrounding it. A general rule is to change up one element while keeping other elements harmonious—change up the patterns while keeping the colours the same.
You can consider creating contrast using materials too. A velvet sofa matches perfectly with a fabric accent chair—or go bolder with this statement Texan Armchair, made of teak and natural goat hide!
Overall, play around with colours, patterns and materials to have your accent chair add that satisfying oomph to your living space—the cherry on top of the vanilla ice cream. Sure, you can do without an accent chair, but your home will be tremendously spruced up in sophistication and luxury with this (not so) little addition.
Cool white marble: the epitome of class, elegance and beauty. Integrating this unique and versatile material into the room can elevate the space to a true, luxurious paradise—so why not integrate some marble pieces into your Singapore home?
Marbling your entire home will certainly be a feat in itself, but you don’t need your entire interior marbled to achieve an ambience of status and beauty. Picking a few choice pieces of marble furniture will bring out a natural and seamless elegance, making all the difference. Consider having a round marble coffee table take the centre stage in your living room, paired together with a polished marble console table; or transform your kitchen counter into a marbled-wonderland. Continue to pay attention to the colours of the room, making sure that the marbled pieces flow together with the theme of your home. A white-marbled coffee table, for instance, can go together with a neutral or black and white colour scheme.
The coolness of marble balances out excellently with the warmth of wood, making wood and marble a choice combination for keeping your home looking fresh. You might match a solid hardwood floor with white marbled furniture, or keep them closely integrated within the same piece of furniture, like a marble-top coffee table with wooden legs. Blending furniture of each material together in the same space also achieves the same effect, like having a wooden side table paired with a stone console table in the living room. All in all, you can’t go wrong with putting together these two well-loved materials!
Setting up a dedicated space will change the way you work at home—increasing productivity, improving mood and boosting energy levels. Your ideal home office should be designed with an intelligent mix of style and functionality to achieve your perfect mix of comfort and efficiency. Here is our recommended home office furniture set for your luxury work-from-home space in Singapore:
The desk is the focal point of the study space and where you spend all your time doing research on your laptop, writing reports, and penning down quick notes. Both in terms of style and function, the desk takes priority over everything else in the entire room—which is why it should be the first furniture chosen for your home office. The Dylan Writing Desk has a dark wood veneer and black powder-coated metal legs, an elegant piece to centre your office space.
Perfectly matching your dark-toned wood desk are dark or neutral-toned leather chairs. The Jimmy Office Chair has a dark brown leather seat and a beautifully-patterned wooden backing, an elegant match for your desk. Consider comfort when picking an office chair, making sure that the chair supports your lower back and, if you prefer, your neck so that your ears, shoulders, and hips are properly aligned for good working posture.
Although the Dylan Writing Desk already contains three shallow drawers for you to conveniently store your most-used items like pens, notebooks, and files, a practical home office set up offers plenty of room for storage—over the year, your documents and books pile up and require a space to be neatly put away.
The Billy Bookshelf gives you easy access to your notes and has open sleek metal framings that show off your collection of best books to anyone who enters the room. You can also decorate the shelf with ornaments and plants to add a burst of life into your home office.
Overall, these pieces of home office furniture encompass both style and functionality; their dark wood, leather, and metal finishes and brown and black palate lend to a luxurious home working environment.
One dressing table and a few small accessories are all you need to create a cosy vanity space for doing hair, makeup and putting on your favourite jewellery. We share three pieces of furniture you need to put together your personalised dressing space!
Having a thin and elegant structure, a dressing table fits easily into any corner of a room. You can slip this delightful set up into your bedroom or bathroom for an intimate space to do yourself up. The Pearla Dressing Table is cream-coloured with rounded edges, bringing a softer ambience to the room and blending in easily with most colour palates. Complete with a spacious drawer, a white marble-top and a brass finish, this dreamy piece carries with it a Victorian-style luxury vibe.
Cushioned stools are the most elegant option for a lady’s dressing table—how else can one powder one’s face if not with the softest chair to comfortably sit on? More modern stools have acrylic or metal legs to create harder and cleaner lines while still preserving a soft cushion top for comfort.
Use a round or oval mirror with gold framing to complement the colour of your dressing table. Simply lean the mirror against or hang it up on the wall, and voila—you have your perfect personal dressing space! You can decorate your table with a vase of flowers, but apart from that, your beauty products, perfumes, and makeup will likely fill up the rest of the space. If you desire better lighting, you can install decorative fixtures around the mirror as well.
Building a luxury dream home is a creative process that allows you to mix, match and come up with a style that is beautifully and elegantly you. Paying attention to the little details like colours, patterns, materials and size can really switch up your home interior, reimagining it for greater style and luxury. Keep our helpful tips in mind as you go out, shop for furniture, and start designing your wonderful, magnificent home!
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