Living | Food & Entertaining

How To: Tablescaping

Dressing your coffee table is the finishing touch to styling your living room, after you’ve got your large furniture items in place. Your coffee table can make the room homely, warm and elegant. It should reflect your personality and tie your whole room together. Recently, Bowerbird Home teamed up with Clinton Cordeiro in hosting learning sessions on how to style your coffee, side, and entry tables to perfection. We speak to Clinton who gives us his top tips for styling a coffee table:

1. Keep your arrangement relatively low in height so it doesn’t block eye contact across the conversational space. If you feel you need some height, add a tall narrow finial or clear glass candle stand.

2. Small clusters of odd numbers of accessories typically work. If the cluster is larger, the number of accessories is less important.

3. Symmetry can create a more formal aesthetic, for example, matching blue and white ceramic jars on either side of a sideboard, whereas asymmetry creates a more relaxed, informal style.

4. Create a conversation piece by including interesting personal objects in your arrangement. Objects with a story, such as a bowl of shells collected on past summer holidays or trinkets found in a flea market are perfect for this.

5. Create visual interest by using contrasting or complementing colour, shape and size, and texture. For colour, you may choose monochrome objects of different shapes and heights, or add a pop of contrasting colour. For shape and size, you may look to use objects of varying heights, so the tallest is the peak, the shortest the base and something in between, each item of a different by complimentary shape. For texture, contrast a shiny object or metallic tray on a dark table top surface to bring light reflection. An object with a patterned or detailed surface contrasts against a flat coloured tabletop.

6. Organic elements soften a space visually and add colour, so bring greenery, a bowl of fruit, or flowers into the table dressing. We often mix real flowers in the vases with the silk flowers we sell which shows authenticity. Adding something like a small bowl of star anise provides visual interest as well as fragrance.

7. Group your objects tightly, not spread across the table. This creates more of an impact and gives the room a focus.

8. Use decorative vessels or lidded boxes to hide less attractive but practical things, such as remote controls or lighters to ignite scented candles. We stock laquer boxes and smaller wicker baskets for exactly this purpose.

9. Always start with an object that you love, and build from there. It is easy to create something beautiful when you are inspired by the initial piece you choose to use. This may be that special conversation piece.

10. There are no firm rules! Experiment, play with different objects, develop your eye for it, and most importantly, enjoy it. Styling your own home is meant to be fun, and should reflect who you are.