Homeowner’s Guide to Furniture Styles
Updated: Jan. 31, 2024
Learn to recognize these furniture styles so it's easier for you to navigate all the choices online and in thrift stops.
Chippendale
Launched in the 1700s, this style gets its name from famed cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale. It contains elements of Queen Anne, Gothic, Rococo and Chinese style furniture.
Key Chippendale elements include curvy cabriole legs ending in ball-and-claw or lion’s feet, or square legs with square feet. Chairs are made from darker woods like mahogany, cherry or walnut, and often feature ornate backs. The furnishings many Americans consider “formal” reflect Chippendale design influence.
Authentic pieces command big-time price tags, but there are plenty of well-made (and not-so-well-made) knockoffs, and even antique knockoffs. Chippendale wasn’t cheap in its prime, either.
Arts and Crafts
Arts and Crafts furniture rose to prominence in the late 1800s and early 1900s as a response to industrialization and mass production, with the style attributed in part to William Morris.
It emphasized a return to the craft of creating furniture, seen in the hallmarks of its design: Mortise-and-tenon joinery (using minimal glue or nails); natural wood (especially white and red oak), showing the grain; and chunky silhouettes.
“You’ll notice a lot of hand-carved, handcrafted details,” says Willow Wright, owner of Urban Redeux in Alexandria, Virginia. “It’s more utilitarian and functional, and the hardware tends to be iron or hammered metals. It’s really functional and simple.”
Technically, Mission furniture tends to be a little chunkier than Arts and Crafts. But the slatted pieces are an offshoot, with Stickley the standard-bearer on Mission pieces.
“Once you see it, you can’t unsee it,” Wright says. “Think Craftsman homes, upscale lodges and chalets in the mountains.” Pieces are also found in California modern settings.
Art Nouveau
Wright says many people confuse Art Deco with Art Nouveau, but there’s an obvious tell: Art Nouveau features flowing lines, graceful shapes and curvaceous silhouettes. In contrast, Art Deco is geometric and sharp-lined (more on that later).
“Art Nouveau was really formed from nature,” Wright says. “There is more whimsy, more flow. It’s softer.” She says furniture makers also started adding colored glass, metals and ceramics for decor touches, moving away from big, heavy wood-only pieces.
Another tell? “Details are really fantastical, sometimes including faeries or dreamlike imagery,” she says. “It’s kinda unicorn-y, in a way.”
Decorative flourishes on the furnishings include plants, vines and floral motifs. Need a quick design reference to call up to envision it? Think Tiffany.
Art Deco
Art Deco is as if “The Great Gatsby” came to life in interiors, calling up the excess, glitz and glamour of the Roaring 20s. Art Deco was a prevailing style starting in 1920 and ran popularly through the 1940s, when midcentury styles began to take over.
Furniture was still often made of solid wood. But veneers start to show up, and finishes could be ebonized, high-gloss or even bold, jewel-tone or contrasting colors. Art Deco pieces might have gold accents or other geometric flourishes.
“Zigzags, chevrons, bold straight lines and sunburst patterns” also characterize flourishes on these furnishings, Wright says, a trickle-down effect from modern architecture. Think the Chrysler Building in New York City.
Hollywood Regency
In the swirl of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and the rapidly approaching midcentury movements came the roots of maximalist design: Hollywood Regency, which prevailed from the 1920s through the1950s and came back strong in the aughts.
Furnishings take the fanciest flourishes of Art Deco and embellish them. High gloss, lacquer, tufting, faux bamboo and upholstery come in an adventurous variety of textures, like faux fur and velvet. Furnishings contrast with harlequin floors, chinoiserie motifs and lots of metallics.
Need inspiration? Look to designers who shaped Hollywood Regency: Dorothy Draper and David Hicks.
Scandinavian
What Americans often call “Scandinavian style” happened concurrently with the Art Deco and Regency movements, even if it hadn’t come to full circle here in the U.S. Some consider the Golden Age of Scandi style to be the 1930s, but it was really more midcentury when it landed stateside.
Scandinavian style is marked by natural, warm woods and materials, and its subsequent harmony with nature. It’s also prized as much for its practicality (size, function) as for its style (minimal, inviting). Styles popularized by designers Arne Jacobsen, Finn Juhl and Hans Wegner remain perennially popular.
This style surged most recently with the Danish interiors concept of “hygge” and Japandi styles. (Plus, you know, IKEA.)
Midcentury Modern
“This one is the easiest one for people to recognize,” Wright says. The furniture style popularized from the 1950s to 1970s was led by designers and firms like Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, Herman Miller, George Nelson, Knoll, Lane, Eero Saarinen and more.
Angular legs that taper outward and natural materials like teak, walnut and leather characterize the minimalist furniture. Informed by Scandinavian design, it featured well-made pieces with solid wood construction. But laminate and metal also came into fashion, and modular pieces (customizable wall units in particular) became popular. Wright snaps up these pieces when she finds one for her shop.
The widening perspective of design, made possible by economic boom time and commercial air travel, also meant other elements started to trickle in, including the Space Race (Sputnik lamps, bubble lamps, egg chairs).
If that wasn’t enough, Wright says, “even though you had clean lines, a lot of sculptural things were still happening at the time. Broyhill’s Brasilia furniture has a lot of curves in it, for example.”
Midcentury modern had a real resurgence when television’s Mad Men came on the scene. Many midcentury pieces are now considered timeless classics, but the general market has cooled on this style.
Retro/Kitsch
There was a LOT happening from the 1950s through 1970s, and not all of it fit into the midcentury modern category.
Experts don’t seem to have a great catchall for it, but this category could include anything from Atomic/Space Race pieces like boomerang tables to hippie macrame plant hangers to boho wicker furniture sets and upholstery that featured chenille, paisley, velvet and mushroom motifs.
Some of these pieces and motifs have trickled down to cottagecore and found a little recent resurgence.
Industrial
Industrial furniture harkens back to the beginnings of industrialization, but became really popular around the turn of the 20th century. That’s when Parisian Paul Henry Nicolle made metal stools with a backrest. Industrial furnishings as a whole take cues from old factories, or reusing old technologies as furnishings.
Industrial furniture resurged in the early aughts, when developers converted many American factories and workspaces into living spaces with open ductwork, distressed wood floors and exposed brick. Furnishings usually feature a lot of metal and distressed wood, like factory carts repurposed into coffee tables.
As the style evolves, we’re seeing softer, more refined versions of industrial furnishings show up in modern farmhouse settings.
Postmodern
“In the 80s we still had a little bit of everything,” Wright says. “We had [influences of] Art Deco and Art Nouveau and midcentury. They seem like their own very different styles but the 1980s had full-on globalization in pop culture and was influenced by so many other design periods.”
That means really soft, overstuffed furnishings with big roll arms covered in Laura Ashley-style chintz patterns. There were travertine tables with triangular bases, topped with a sphere, holding up the tabletop. Blush tones in watercolor patterns coexisted alongside primary colors and gridded patterns.
High gloss, mirrored surfaces, burl wood with gold accents, Lucite. It was … eclectic! And like the over-the-top 80s, much of it is fashion over function.
American designer (and eventual Target collaborator) Michael Graves and architect Frank Gehry made a mark during this period. True to the design maxim that fashions come around every 20 years or so, postmodernism is having a moment now.
Contemporary
Experts sometimes argue about what qualifies as contemporary. Wright says contemporary generally means what you might see on the market now as you’re shopping. Currently, that could be anything from knockoffs of midcentury design to postmodern pieces to rustic modern or modern farmhouse.
“Cottagecore exists alongside Barbiecore alongside Joanna Gaines,” she says.
Unfortunately, a lot of modern furniture that’s available mass market lacks the same quality of prior periods. But contemporary styles are based on evolutions of past styles. Mixing and matching what feels right for your home from vintage pieces might spur another call for sustainability and upcycling as you make your own eclectic mix.
Originally Published: September 19, 2023
