Mid Century Modern furniture has been hugely popular for well over a decade. And for good reason, the shapes are sculptural, the colours are fun and they are full of nostalgia and personality.
You can find it everywhere.
And if you love the style, mixing some into your decor can be a great move.
However, because it’s a trending look, it sometimes becomes hard to avoid this style if you’re hell bent on finding the right dining room chair (for example) but really it’s a style that doesn’t belong with the table you have.
Here are 3 issues I see all the time with retro modern furniture.
1. Mind your legs
When Tricia, my Director of eDesign, gave her living room a makeover in her previous home, a mid century bungalow, she chose modern style furniture with straight rather than angled legs.
Why? Because she knows that angled legs are where MCM pieces can get especially campy. And because all those leggy pieces are visually busy, especially in a small space.
Instead she chose straight legs and tables that didn’t add even more bare legs.
But when she decided to update the adjoining dining room with new chairs, the options in yellow to match the drapes had angled legs. She ordered them anyway.
She then told me that when she stuck them around the table it was immediately clear that they would not work at all. All together it looked like a game of Pick Up Sticks 😬
There’s nothing wrong with Eames look chairs but as you can see in the example above, when you put them around a table with even more legs it sure does get busy!
And it makes sense. From the perspective of visual principles, lines are vectors. Like directonal arrows, they direct the eye. And angled lines are much “faster” and more visually dynamic than squared off ones. Bottom line, a tangle of them is annoying to look at.
This is part of the reason why the Saarinen tulip table is enduringly famous. It pairs well with leggy chairs in tight grouping. He designed this table as a solution to what Saarinen called the “ugly, confusing, unrestful world” created by typical table and chair legs.
Saarinen Table – Casa Tres Chic
This table is so versatile it also works with traditional chairs.
Elle Decor | Here’s a link to a smaller 42″ round one
This table is also a good alternative to a leggy table
Tricia ended up going with a mix of seating that reduced the visual noise – benches and two mid century vintage chairs with straight legs (below).
Tricia’s bungalow dining room
It’s too easy when you’re looking for the perfect colour to miss considering how the legs of the piece are going to look. And if you’ve gone to the trouble of having them shipped and assembling them, it starts to look like a huge pain to return them.
So many of the off the shelf and affordable options are MCM with Jetsons’ legs.
But wait, it looks like the Jetsons’ interior designer is savvy about busy legs haha.
2. Don’t go all in on MCM
The other reason I would tread lightly with MCM furniture is that, because it has been hugely popular, and abundant copies are often cheaply made and designed, the style has lost it’s bespoke image of quality and edginess. Because, yes, trends are about cultural context. And when that perception goes from rare and design savvy to mass produced, cheap and common that’s when things lose their appeal.
Mid Century Modern style is enduring, don’t get me wrong, but I would use it sparingly rather than trying to make your home look like a modernist time capsule. And be choosey about the MCM pieces you go for.
You’ve probably heard me talk about working with the style of your home and sticking with it. Well here’s the nuance. It’s when you’re creating your installed elements like your fireplace, kitchen and floors that you really want to pick a style and stick with it to avoid a mishmash. But when it comes to decorating, this is where you can mix in the odd more modern or traditional piece to create a collected look.
Just like the modern lighting in my last dining room:
We definitely want to avoid creating the look that we bought every stick of furniture from the same store. And modern furniture is where I often see people making this mistake.
For excellent inspiration and a current take on MCM style, Arvin Orlano does it just right (below).
Learning to be a good decorator takes practice. Some trial and error and a few expensive mistakes. But you can dramatically accelerate training your eye and finding your style by playing around with mood boards. It’s so easy to learn how! I’ve got a bite sized self-directed course right here for you. You can spend the lazy days of the holidays having the most fun envisioning all your home decorating projects! And what’s so good is you’ll be much less likely to make mistakes on the details if you can see all the pieces you’re considering together on your mood boards!
Even better! If you join my colourful community, you’ll be able to connect with me and my team and many fabulous like minded design enthusiasts that hang out here! You can get feedback on your projects while you make new friends. AND the mood board course is FREE once you’re inside!
PS My thoughts on Pantone’s colour of the year? Of course, beige is back and pink beige will reign. Just like taupe (the warmest of the greys) reigned these last 15 years with the grey trend and the black and white trend.
And with all these warm neutrals on the horizon, this is your official notice that it’s YOUR year to attend my True Colour Expert training!
We’ve set the dates for 2025:
May 14th and 15th in the Chicago area
October 22nd and 23rd in Dallas
Click here to be notified as soon as registrations open up!
Related posts:
How to Mix Dining Chairs and Tables (Pass the Pretty Test)
Refresh your Dining Room with Upholstered Chairs
5 Dining Room Mistakes Your Probably Making
“The Jetsons’ interior designer is savvy about busy legs” 😂😂. I love it. So many Jetsons’ truisms now a reality lol.
Tricia’s first table and chair set really helps to see the reality of what you’re saying and teaching about the leggy issue. Thanks!
Interesting article. Maria, I chuckled a bit at your last comment about beige being back and pink beige will reign because I have memories of your warning about pink beige being so bossy. And I agree. To my eye, pink beige plays well with very few colors at all. I had a gorgeous pink beige suede jacket. I bought it because of the fit, style and huge sale price. It never looked good with much of anything. It seems to me that if you decorate with it as a paint color, flooring, or hard surface, you can forget inserting any pretty color into your scheme. The greys, although passé now, were much more welcoming to bright, interesting colors in really any hue. Do you agree or is my thinking wrong?
I think you are 100% correct! 🙂
Thanks so much for this! I “lean” mcm in my style, but enjoy mixing other styles in. It really does give it a warmer, more personal feel.
While I applaud Tricia’s problem solving, that bench seating is not comfortable at all.
Many pink beige tones remind me of my mother’s take on homemade salad dressing, equal parts mayonnaise and ketchup mixed together. ( She was a great cook generally, this was one of her few fails!)
Maria, you certainly put into words exactly what I’ve always thought. I’ve never been a fan of those splayed legs (looks like kid furniture to me lol). I much prefer Billy Baldwin’s MCM design – fabulous!