How to Mix & Match Chairs in a Family Room

Take inventory of all the chairs you need in your family room so you don't overcrowd the room or provide insufficient seating. You may need a comfortable reading chair, two sitting chairs and a chair for a work table or small children's table, for instance.

Shop around for chairs with a similar size and visual weight. The mismatching effect tends to work best when it's subtle; having one that is compact and light and another that is large and bulky can be too drastic a contrast. Exceptions may be a corner reading chair that's separate from the rest, but look for options that are relatively proportional in size and weight.

Place chairs from the same era or design movement in your family room. Two different mid-century-modern chairs may compliment one another very well, since both have sleek, simple lines and organic shapes, for instance. Incorporate a chair from a completely different movement for a bit of contrast, but paint or upholster it in a color or fabric similar to the other chairs to keep a unified look.

Mix and match chairs with similar bodies and different colors or patterns. Study a color wheel, and experiment with using two colors next to each other and one color across from those two for a colorful theme.

Place chairs in your family room that offer a variety of textures. Mix carved wood with metal or bamboo with recycled plastic. This works especially well if one piece has some design element that's inspired by another.

Keep a uniform number of mismatched chairs if some of them are a set. For instance, if you're setting chairs around a table with one pair and one mismatched chair, place the mismatched chair at the head of the table to create symmetry.