I’ll attempt to answer this question by asking another question:
When it comes to decorating your home, what do you want your furnishings to accomplish?
Let me break it down a little further.
If you need a new couch for your loft, what do you want that couch to do? Do you want it to provide seating? That would be function.
Do you want the couch to look pretty? That would be style.
Do you want a couch that you can relax on all weekend, melt into, maybe even take a nap on? That would be comfort.
Often times, furniture does one or two of these things. But when it does all three, well, that’s the design trifecta.
I’m a firm believer that furniture and home decor can encompass all three elements. It just takes a little more work – as in a little more shopping – to find the perfect pieces. It’s not always easy.
Have you ever been to a friend’s house for dinner and sat on the most uncomfortable dining chair? It may have looked fabulous in the space, but your backside paid for it the next day.
The chair had style and function but lacked comfort. Any maybe after the soup, it started to lack function too.
Or maybe you dated a guy in college that had the most comfortable recliner, but it was hideous to look at. Because it lacked style.
Small spaces beg for the design trifecta. They have to. There’s not a lot of room to waste. The design plan has to be smart all the way through – from the couch to the bed to the dining suite to the kitchen accessories.
Larger homes have more space to work with, but they also have more room for error.
The couch is too puny for the room. The dining table is the wrong shape for the space. The bar stools are too tall for the countertop. The cushions on the patio furniture are too thin. The living room doesn’t have a side table in reach to set down a beverage.
The list is seemingly endless.
And I’m not writing about this because I have design trifecta running through my house. No, but I am writing from the experience of failure.
I had limited space in my condo and had to be smart about the pieces I brought into it. And I chose wrong over and over again. In fact, in the 18 years of living there, I never conquered the space limitations.
I had a living room that had only one uninterrupted wall. The front door and a fireplace took up another side. A sliding glass door took up another side. The fourth side was open to the kitchen.
It was frustrating trying to create a functional living space that didn’t look cluttered. It was nearly impossible. No, not nearly impossible. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE.
That’s when I realized I had to be smart about the furniture I chose. Each piece had an assignment: they had to provide function, style, and comfort. All at the same time.
Think of the Murphy bed.
You often see the Murphy bed in a room that has to do double duty, typically a guest bedroom and an office.
When guests are over, the bed comes down from the wall. When the guests are gone, the bed is lifted back up and the room is an office again. Cubbies and shelving on the underside of the bed add style and more function for the office. It’s genius.
It has to be genius because most of us cannot accomplish the trifecta on our own for every piece of furniture we bring into our homes. We either don’t think about it, or it’s too time-consuming, or we focus on comfort or style and forget about the other two elements.
John and I will soon be shopping for a couch for the loft, which is where I got my example above. A part of me is excited to bring a new piece of furniture into the house. The other part of me is nervous about picking the wrong piece for the reasons I’ve outlined in this blog.
We have a couch in mind that we saw at American Furniture Warehouse a year ago. The couch hits the design trifecta – function, style and comfort. But I wouldn’t be me if I still didn’t worry that it’ll fall short in some area once we bring it home.
The couch is also priced right, which actually makes it a design quadfecta. Oh, did I not mention the forth element of home decor?
Designing Goldilocks 