5 Items to Outfit Your Coffee Table

Showcasing your personality with this home staple

Often a focal point of a room, the coffee table is the perfect place to share your personality – your passions, places you’ve been to, and your style. I’m a big proponent of taking your time to fill your house and this is no different. Since space is limited, think quality over quantity.

Here are a few places to start…

Beautiful books. There are some gorgeous coffee table books out there. These tend to be large, heavy, and full of pictures. They tend to look best in stacks. Along with fashion books and interior design books, there are terrific travel books and photography books. Pick ones that match your personality and interests.

Vintage reads. Supple leather-bound books aren’t restricted to bookcases. Mix a few into your coffee table stacks, coordinating your colors. Look for unique finds from your local antique shops and old used bookstores. Having a penchant for entertaining, designing, and collecting, I seek out books that display these passions of mine. This too-fun Esquire book came from one of my favorites, Gray Antiques, in Baltimore, Maryland. For me, Sotheby’s auction catalogs are perfect ones to collect, too. I found the one pictured below down the road from Nemacolin in Pennsylvania. You can search for many of these vintage books on sites like eBay, or from Juniper Books or The Strand in New York City.

Collected items. Antique ring dishes – or even saucers – bring an elegant and eclectic look on top of a stack of coffee table books. Corals and clusters of barnacles add a coastal feel, as does a nautical knot. You can find lots of smaller vases and other items at some of the more commercial stores as well, like Pottery Barn or Home Goods. These all add interest to your coffee table. Try sticking a few branches of cotton into an antique vase or a favorite flower or two for extra décor.

Candles. I adore candles and sitting atop a tray or a stack of books, they look oh-so-chic. Opt for Diptyque’s famous scents, or those by Nest, Jo Malone (my personal favorite), Charleston’s Candlefish, or Rigaud.

Trays. Assortments of items just appear more organized and purposeful when happily contained on a tray. I love shagreen, cane, and mother of pearl trays especially. Play around with the sizes and see what fits best with your style. You may want to try a hand-painted tray like this one in a chinoiserie or a lucite tray like one of these by Katie Kime.

Happy styling!