HOW TO DECORATE WITH TWO-TONE FURNITURE

SO WHAT'S ALL THE FUSS WITH TWO-TONE FURNITURE?

The label ‘two-tone furniture’ applies to those pieces of timber furniture which have two different tones of finish. Our favourite pairing is our signature ivory wash with a honey-coloured top. It’s tried and true, which is why you’ll see it in our Paris collection.

I BET TWO-TONE FURNITURE DOESN’T EVEN GO WITH THAT MUCH, RIGHT?

Wrong. Two-tone timber pieces work with many different furniture styles, for the simple reason that having two different tones gives you twice as many colours to work with. For example, you can take our ivory/honey combination and use it as the base of pretty much any room, and particularly rooms furnished in country style, French country style, French Provincial style, Hamptons Style or Shabby Chic. That’s pretty versatile!

Two-tone furniture also adds another layer of depth and character to your home and is a super easy way to break up timber floorboards.

ALL RIGHT, I’M LISTENING. HOW MIGHT I FURNISH MY DINING ROOM WITH TWO-TONE FURNITURE?

The foundations of the room: wall paint and the floor. Often there’s not much you can do about this without a lot of work (time and/or money), but a few pointers for your foundations are:

Use tiles or floorboards rather than carpet. There tends to be less crying over spilt milk when it takes two minutes to clean rather than twenty!
Your wall paint or paper should feature of a soft colour of nature that makes people want to eat food. Think of the colours of things that enter our bodies, and steer clear of the colours of things that exit them. An easy pick would be a light, neutral colour like but if you’re confident enough you should definitely experiment, at least with one wall in the room.
Take advantage of natural light as much as you can. It’ll make any eating area more inviting.

Next step: filling your dining room. We always recommend that you get the full dining set, if your room can fit it: a buffet, a dining table, and enough dining chairs for your family and a few guests. The dining table and buffet should come from the same furniture collection, but you can mix and match the chairs to your taste.

Final step: personalise the space with homewares. You can really go crazy with homewares! One piece of advice, though: artificial fruits and foliage might be easy to maintain, but they’re probably not the best idea for a dining room. People want to feel like they’re eating real food when they’re in your dining room, and that’s always more believable when they’ve got real fruit and foliage to look at. Besides, guests don’t like feeling outsmarted by a deceptive piece of “fruit” if they’re looking for a sneaky bite while they’re visiting.

HOW ABOUT MY LIVING ROOM?

Two-tone furniture is an easy way to make any room come to life, especially if you live in a small space. Need inspiration? Look no further than our display below.

So, what’s so good about this display? Without the honey-coloured tops, the similar-coloured legs of the sofas would become lost, and it would become a sea of beiges, ivories, and blues. Which is fine. But that extra dimension of colour adds a little something really makes the room pop, without being so dominating that you can’t make the room your own. With such a characterful yet harmonious living or lounge setting, who wouldn’t want to take an afternoon nap?

AND THE BEDROOM?

Everything about two-tone furniture in the living room applies to the bedroom, too. But what makes two-tone perhaps even better in the bedroom is that just about any quilt cover design will go with it. You want to continue the navy scheme? Go for it. You want to go with a lighter scheme like below? Go for it. You want to change the look of your bedroom every season without changing the fundamental pieces? Go for it. Two-tone furniture will help you feel cosy regardless of your preferred decorations.