How to Style a Console
Here's how I do it, anyway
As part of my book tour, I’m making a handful of appearances at local Home + Patio shows. These are like trade shows for people looking to renovate their homes, full of vendors selling everything from live plants to magic mops.
There’s also usually a stage with a rotating selection of guests giving talks. I usually speak for about 20 minutes, sharing how I got into collecting vintage and offering my tips on shopping thrift stores, and then I answer questions. It’s pretty standard, but I do occasionally get to venture into new territory. In a couple of weeks, for instance, I’ll be at the Atlanta show, where I’m partnering with Goodwill of North Georgia to curate a selection of vintage finds that attendees can actually shop at the show. My hope is that I find pieces that will come together for a little room and I would love to find an incredible console that I can style up.
The console is one of the most fun styling opportunities, and I think that’s due in large part to the fact that consoles serve no real purpose. They are meant to take up space and look pretty (or, if set up behind a couch, maybe to act as sort of a dividing line between spaces).
So ahead of my thrifting extravaganza, I thought I’d share all the pieces I personally love for an at-home console moment, plus some tips on how to bring it all together.
But before we get into my picks for all the things you need to kit out your console, let’s soak in the inspo.
And PS. if you’re in Northeast Florida, I’ll be at the Jacksonville Home + Patio Show next Saturday at 3 PM.
Rebecca de Ravenel’s home, via AD
Andrea Franchini’s home, via AD
Rattan console table // Pearl vase // Only This and Nothing More print (by me!) // Pink protea bunch // Slim Aarons photography print // Green lamp with rattan shade
Alex Katz book // Bertoia book // Fleurshadow candle // Vintage hammered dog sculpture // Vintage honed pink marble bowl
Tabletop easel // Cy Twombly book // Pink drawing // Marble box with lidded orb // Vintage ashtray
My Tips for Console Styling
Play with proportion: Whenever you’re designing anything (be it an outfit, a room, a plate of food), you want to create movement. The best way to do that via a console is by adding pieces that force the eye to move around—something tall, something short, something wide, something thin. You can also fake height by adding a stack of books beneath basically anything.
Strike a balance between symmetry and tension: For so long, symmetry was the aim in interiors. If you had a lamp on one side, you wanted the matching lamp to balance things out on the other. These days, I’d say it’s more about tension — adding a huge piece of art to a smaller wall space, putting a lamp only on one side of a table, etc. This is also where the rule of three comes in. If you can, try to play with odd numbers, rather than even, which feels more interesting (so three things on one side of a console, one thing on the other).
Think outside the standard “one piece of art on a wall:” There are so many options for displaying art. You could do a killer gallery wall a la my friend Kaitlyn. You could do a collection of similarly-sized prints à la my friend Courtney. You could hang a piece of art sideways. Or you could hang one large piece on the wall, and then lean a smaller piece in front of it (or place the smaller piece in a tabletop easel).
Add in some practical pieces: A box to store loose mail or various odds and ends, a small bowl or plate for your keys—these are the pieces you will actually use day after day. (Design should be about form, but it should also be about function.)
Layer: Once you’ve hit all the musts, you can begin layering in the fun stuff. Place a stool or some boxes beneath the console, drape a vintage necklace over a piece of art… I once even stuck my prom corsage on an old pair of antique windows I had hanging in my high school bedroom and it stayed there for more than a decade.
Recommended reading/listening:
Frank Lloyd Wright’s final design has hit the market… for $8.9 million.
I love this advice column on envy, which I think hits women especially hard. When I went through a personally difficult time in my life a few years ago, my entire outlook shifted and as part of that, I really stopped feeling jealous of others and instead focused solely on my own path and what I could do to improve it. This is such great advice: “You’re never too successful or too secure to avoid [jealousy.] There will always, always be someone out there with something you want. That’s a fact of life, and it won’t change. What can change, however, is our response to that feeling.”
One to follow: @gaudism imagines what the iconic architect could have created, using AI and VR:
and I’ll leave you with this…