Why Mis-Matching Furniture is a Key Trend in Interior Design 2022

Why Mis-Matching Furniture is a Key Trend in Interior Design 2022

Once upon a time, the matching three-piece suite for the living room was at the top of every ‘starter couple’s’ wedding registry. The three-seater sofa and matching armchairs was, for a long time, a real stable – and, for some people, the question wasn’t, ‘why do we need everything to match?’ it was, instead, ‘Why stop there?’

Interior design has taken us some fascinating places over the years, but perhaps one of the most fascinating was the living room or bedroom styled around one single, solitary pattern. This goes far beyond the three-piece suite, and includes the wallpaper, the curtains, and accent cushions – everything that could be made with that same pattern, was made with that same pattern. Was it too much? Of course. Did it define an era of ‘homemaking’? Absolutely.

We may not be knee-deep in a fit-everything floral anymore, but the trend for purchasing furniture in matching sets persisted. It’s useful, it’s a good way to keep the décor cohesive, but it’s also being superseded by its polar opposite these days: mis-matched everything.

Is matching furniture out of style?

Pretty much, yes. As of the 2020s, the trend for matching furniture sets really started to take a nosedive, although it had been waning in popularity for a long time already. The past few years have seen interior designer after interior designer declare their allegiance to unique, one-of-a-kind pieces – and, personally, we couldn’t be happier.

Why? People’s tastes will dictate why they prefer what they prefer but, these days, the emphasis seems to be falling on curating quality pieces – chosen for their beauty, rather than anything else – for our homes. People are looking to move away from that sense of ‘mass production’ in every area of their lives, from food to fashion, and interior design is absolutely no exception.

That’s the thing with matching pieces of furniture – they tend to betray their own origins. We like our rooms to tell stories – stories of many years’ worth of travel and artistry, being seduced by beautiful items and by prints and colours we couldn’t walk away from. That way, homes can feel incredibly person to those who live within them, rather than perched on the line between home and window display.

That’s not to say that homes furnished with matching pieces look like showrooms. But that, when you look at a room furnished with cohesive pieces clearly from the same ‘set’, the imagination doesn’t wander quite so much – or so far.

How do you mix furniture?

Fortune favours the bold, and so does pattern-mixing. There are very few patterns that can’t live harmoniously with other patterns, so long as you understand how to bring them together productively, rather than at-random.

When it comes to the furniture pieces, keep an open mind. Find items that speak to you or, failing that, choose your own upholstery fabric and have something made that is entirely unique to you and your home. Make a concerted effort to vary silhouettes, too – particularly when you’re picking items like bedside tables (of which you’ll usually need two), and end tables for the living room. You might even consider getting an eclectic mix of chairs for the dining room, rather than going for a matching set of six or eight. It can feel counterintuitive, but the results won’t feel like a jumble sale; instead, your rooms will have a distinctively personal touch on them that really matters to people these days.

You can also lean into creating an impression of the ‘well-travelled interior designer’ by incorporating different styles. A touch of Scandinavian folk alongside the striking, vivid motifs of Central African design – like our Kenil in Indigo – and those quintessentially British flowers that just look good in any home may sound like a confused collection of prints and styles, but the more you lean into that sense of discoordination, the more effective and striking it gets.

You can take a look at our guide to pattern mixing for more information on the subject.

Learning how to stop yourself from feeling as though everything needs to be perfectly coordinated isn’t as easy as it sounds. Most of us are used to feeling as though any mismatch is a sign of a lack of vision, rather than a charming eclecticism that is actually more appealing than a matching three piece suite. We can be thrown-off by a bed flanked by uncoordinated bedside tables, or a dining table with six different styles of chair drawn up to it, but we can also learn to love those quirks for what they are: proof of a unique, lived-in home with its own beauty.