Comfortable vs. Fancy-Schmancy Furniture Styles – or Both!
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By Bill Primavera
When I first moved to New York way back in the dark ages, I lived in a five-story walk-up called a cold-water flat that would be illegal today. And much of the furniture I gathered was from discards left on the sidewalk.
It was hardly an auspicious beginning to a life-long love for the city and a quest to live more comfortably within its boundaries or environs before eventually ending up in Westchester.
I worked very hard to raise my standards from early sidewalk to furniture designed as reproductions from Colonial Williamsburg, where I had attended the College of William & Mary. In the glory days of that wonderful department store in Manhattan, B. Altman’s, there was a special department featuring that wonderful reproduction furniture from Williamsburg. Today I enjoy sitting in a Chippendale reproduction settee purchased there.
By the time I was able to buy my first home in Brooklyn Heights, I was proud of the way my place looked. It bespoke quality, albeit a bit formal. Every piece of furniture seemed to dictate that visitors sit up straight. But I remember how offended I was when my older sister visited for the first time and she exclaimed, “I could never live in a place like this,” meaning that it was too formal, even uncomfortable, for her taste.
I really took her comment to heart, and by the time I moved to Westchester to a large home built in the 1700s, my furniture-style preferences had evolved to eclectic, blending formal with more comfortable. My living room today features such disparate furnishings as an 18th century corner chair facing a modern Lawson sofa (that converts to a bed, no less).
Now when I want to stretch out, I can plop down length-wise onto that sofa without trepidation.
Our lifestyles today demand a more casual approach to home furnishings. Home layouts are more open. The formal living room or sitting room, separated from the rest of the house, is falling into oblivion. Comfort has definitely taken preference over formality.
Are these preferences cyclical and will we be returning to a more formal approach to furnishing anytime soon? It’s highly doubtful, if you consider other style trends. Look at the way we dress, at the ways we enjoy leisure time and the preferences of style influencers whom we follow like sheep.
Another consideration is that our population is skewing older – and that certainly includes me. No longer can I sit for any length of time at my computer in my office chair that seems to be getting harder by the day. I must remember to get that pillow to ameliorate the discomfort to my derriere, even though that physical part of my anatomy is getting more generous as I approach a more sedentary – read comfortable – lifestyle.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com). To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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