Why Your Dining Chairs Don't All Need to Match

There's a habit a lot of us fall into when furnishing a dining room: buy the set, buy it matching, and there, you are done. But some of the nicest dining spaces we've come across break that rule entirely. There is variety there, there is mixing and matching, and at times, a mixing of eras as well. What we are getting at here is including a Windsor chair or two in the mix to make it work.

The Windsor chair has been around since the early 1700s, named after the English town, and it's held its place in homes ever since. With a spindled back, a shaped solid seat, and legs splayed just enough to feel sturdy without looking clunky, it's a design that's stayed useful because it never really tried to be trendy in the first place.

Bring one into a room full of sleeker, more modern furniture, and something interesting happens. It doesn't fight with the rest of the space; it just settles in. A pair of antique Windsors at the ends of a plain oak table, or scattered among your usual dining chairs, adds a bit of weight and warmth that an all-matching set often lacks.
A few ways it tends to work well:

1.     Two Windsors as head chairs, with simpler chairs filling the rest of the table
2.     A full run of Windsors around a contemporary table, for contrast rather than a clash
3.     One standalone piece tucked into a corner or against a wall, doing double duty as a chair and a bit of quiet character

The trick with mixing is proportion and finish. Look for chairs of roughly similar scale, and either a shared wood tone or a deliberate contrast, rather than something in-between that just looks unplanned! If you're after the real thing rather than a reproduction, it's worth spending time with a genuine antique—the patina and slight irregularities are part of what makes it work in a modern room. Have a browse through our current selection of antique chairs and benches to see what might suit your table.