Modern Furniture Shopping Tips for the New Homeowner

Moving in to your new modern home marks the start of your next life chapter, full of all your hopes and dreams of a bright future…. until you realize your new modern home did not come with the modern furniture from your daydreams. Daunting as it may seem as first, here are a few ways to begin modern furniture shopping while also saving you time, money and many headaches:

Understand Furniture Styles: The term ‘Modern Furniture’ encompasses a broad range of styles, from contemporary designs to well-known current designers, from Italian designs to the iconic classic furniture designed from 1920 to 1960.  Even in between are the styles which I consider more neutral or basic American modern with some re-design of Florence Knoll and Hans Wegner.  We wrote a couple of pages to give a little background on Modern vs. Contemporary in our website.

Set a Budget: stop flipping through your latest Dwell, stop pinning, put the Ideabooks on hold, just don’t do anything until you determine this exact number because without it, any step you make forward with your modern furniture shopping will turn into two steps backward.

Create Your Floor Plan: whether you use one of the many room planning apps or scratch paper and crayons, a scaled visual floor plan will determine the modern furniture you will be buying and the size the modern furniture needs to be.  Also, seeing your future living room on paper (or iPad or whatever) instantly squelches any stress you may have had, since this seemingly overwhelming notion is now a methodically feasible plan.

Prioritize Your Purchases:  Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your modern kingdom.  Taking your budget and immediate needs into consideration, figure out the first item to add to your bare living room (hint: the easiest first item is a sofa).  Remember functionality first, so if you’re deciding between the Exhibition Sofa you will use everyday or the Sputnik Chandelier whose only function is sparkling, the sparkle can wait for a later date.

Plan Your Palette: One of my favorite features in a truly modern home is a perfect pop of color you instantly notice throughout the room (I pick red, but its up to you).  Establish the neutral palette to occupy the majority of the room and serve as the subtle backdrop to make your Saarinen Side Chairs really ‘pop’.  Best of all, if you want to make a change to the room in a few years, with your neutral palette already in place, its as easy as swapping out the color to instantly set a new tone for the whole room.

With these primary plans in place, you will be ready to hit the ground running with your modern furniture shopping for your new home.  If you are looking for a great place to start, I would suggest visiting any of three factory showroom locations in Bellingham, Chicago or Dallas!