How to Style a Coffee Table Like a Designer
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- Create anchor points throughout the room, and especially on the coffee table, then balance other decorative pieces around these anchors.
- Balancing decorations with negative, or empty, space is important to allow for breathing room and reduce visual clutter.
- Don’t forget about the vertical space; decorating shelves and other vertical spaces can help you balance the decorations on horizontal surfaces, like coffee tables.
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As the “layered” and “collected” aesthetic continues to dominate our daily social media feeds, the pressure to perfect the tabletop vignette has never been higher. But there is a massive gap between a surface that looks effortlessly curated and one that simply looks like a dumping ground for random objects.
Tabletop styling looks effortless when done right. But when done wrong, it reads as either painfully flat or wildly cluttered. So, how do the professionals walk that line? Kelley Mason, Art Director at Lulu and Georgia, breaks down the definitive rules of surface styling.
Her approach strips away the guesswork and explains simply how to elevate any surface in your home with absolute confidence, from the central coffee table to the narrowest entryway console.
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Varying Scale and Visual Weight
When it comes to the most common styling mistakes, Mason immediately points to proportion. “Not paying attention to scale or visual weight of objects,” she says. “If there are too many items of the same size, surfaces tend to look cluttered at best and visually unappealing at worst.”
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Mason explains that this rule applies to both the height and width of your decor. “This applies to the verticality of an object as well as its width,” she notes. “Uniformly short items look one-note.”
To fix this, you need to diversify the shapes on your table. “It’s best to vary not only the height but also the diameter of pieces,” Mason advises. She recommends achieving this by mixing up varying height stacks of coffee table books, flat-yet-wide objects like low boxes, decorative trays, and taller, thinner items like a sculptural piece.
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Following the Rule of Odd Numbers
Coffee table styling is a huge topic right now, leaving many wondering if different interior styles require different rules. According to Mason, the core framework is universal. “Whether you classify yourself as a minimalist, maximalist or the new ‘midimalist’, the same rules apply,” she says.
The secret lies in the math. “It’s best to stick with objects in groups of odd numbers,” Mason explains. “This looks like groups of one to five objects for a minimalist or seven or more for a maximalist with a large coffee table.”
She emphasizes that layering items can count as a single grouping. “A single stack of coffee table books with a small catchall on top still counts as one,” Mason notes.
When building larger clusters, avoid even pairs. “A stack of coffee table books, a tray corralling a few objects, a small sculpture, and a low vase looks better than a stack of books next to a box,” she advises. “Bonus points for slightly offsetting that single stack of books, or layering the tray and vase to one side while allowing for more negative space between that grouping and the coffee table stack.”
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Embracing Asymmetry and Negative Space
Training your eye to understand balance takes practice. “For me, personally, something will just ‘feel’ better a certain way,” Mason shares. “Sometimes you put a few things down and it feels right. Sometimes you can spend an ungodly amount of time moving a group of objects an inch here, an inch there, take one out, or bring it back.”
Interestingly, perfect symmetry is rarely the answer. “The funny thing about balance is that I actually think asymmetry is the most balanced form,” Mason says. “When things don’t look or feel quite right, it’s often that they are too symmetrical, whether in placement or in visual weight.”
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Empty space plays a massive role in this visual equation. “This often has to do with treating negative space as part of the aspect of the whole,” she explains. “You’re not just looking at five things in a room, you’re looking at fifteen because the spaces around each of the objects are part of the whole visual language. Color and texture can also contribute to visual weight, not just scale or size.”
If an arrangement feels off, Mason recommends a simple trick. “A really useful exercise when something doesn’t feel quite right is to identify the parts you do like and describe what you like about them, to yourself or to someone else,” she advises. “The more you get comfortable with this language, the faster you can come to recognize when something is off because you have been training yourself into it.”
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Curating Meaningful Objects Over Time
“A collected interior feels as if it’s been curated over time, the culmination of objects acquired on travels alongside inherited vintage treasures,” Mason explains. “I think the time aspect is one that people are glossing over in order to get a space finished.”
She encourages homeowners to embrace the aging process of their decor. “I like to talk a lot about temporal texture, which I consider to be the effect of time on individual objects or on a space as a whole,” she notes. “That means bringing in vintage pieces with charm or allowing the patina that comes with age to shine through.”
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Ultimately, these items must mean something to you personally. “The items on display in a collected interior done right are items that reflect the personality of the homeowner and contribute to the narrative of the life being lived,” Mason says. “They are not tchotchkes for tchotchkes’ sake. A tight color story and a connection to the owner are the biggest differences between a composed, cherished collection and an expensive pile of just stuff.”
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Adapting the Rules for Shelves and Dressers
Styling a vertical shelf or a narrow dresser presents completely different constraints than a wide coffee table. Mason admits that these tighter areas require a strategic approach.
“I find I can also struggle with nightstands as the surface area is relatively small and the vertical wall limits placement and overlap,” she shares. “There is a hidden tool in your arsenal with these types of spaces compared to a coffee table, though, and that is lighting, which gives you a completely different element to work with.”
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Lighting instantly transforms these challenging spots. “On a shelf, undermount lights or use a small battery-operated lamp to provide texture and fill tall vertical space with warmth,” Mason suggests.
To conquer the height of a bookshelf, she uses clever overlapping techniques. “The verticality of shelving can be quite challenging, so I love to lean a small piece of art behind the elements on a shelf to give some semblance of overlap and layering,” she says. “On a very wide horizontal shelf, grouping items into vignettes and making sure to vary the negative space between groupings is a good place to start.”
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You can treat bedroom dressers similarly. “A table lamp placed onto a nightstand or dresser helps ground the styling area and takes up a good bit of space, and leaning a piece of art or even a small mirror can help give a sense of lived-in layering,” Mason advises. “From there, apply the same principles for styling a coffee table.”
And if an arrangement still feels incomplete, she has a solution. “For any of these spaces, when in doubt, add a vase with fresh-cut florals,” says Mason. “I find that is always the answer when I get into a pickle.”
