The Best Living Room Furniture for Apartment Dwellers
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The living room is the most complicated place to arrange in the home. It somehow must serve several contradictory functions. It must be comfortable for the days you lounge around and watch movies. It must be inviting for a date coming back. It must support people for dinner parties, but also not feel so empty that when you’re alone you’re just reminded about how nobody came to your dinner parties.
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When taking on the design challenge of the modern living room, it’s best to go big and minimalist, and layer in smaller, maximalist concepts. Allow us to explain: A key tentpole, like a sofa, should not be a big gaudy chintz piece. It should be simply structured, and in a color that feels relaxing and peaceful. As the room fills out, and it becomes time to layer in small pieces like table lamps, picture frames, and tabletop goods like candles, lean in! Go crazy! Get bright green candles, Use that Tintin statue you found at a flea market in Bolivia. Everything in the room should have a purpose (even if that purpose is just to bring joy or add a flourish of color), but the size can dictate the vim and vigor of the room. For the SPY Apartment, we’ve curated a range of items that serve functions while still having a stately look to them.
BEST SOFA
Castlery Owen Sofa
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A good sofa is hard to find. The sofa-in-a-box brands tend to fall apart, and anything worthwhile seems to be at least over $2,000. This one though, from Castlery, strikes the right balance. It’s plush, two seated, and has padded armrests wide enough for a remote (or a drink, briefly). The seats are much deeper than the average apartment sofa, while still being an 80” width perfect for small living rooms. The butt feel? Soft but not too soft.
BEST COFFEE TABLE
West Elm Pop Up Coffee Table
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Apartment living is about maximizing space and storage. A coffee table is also not just for coffee. It’s for dinner. It’s for work. It’s for feet. This table works for all use cases. It sits away from a sofa leaving a channel to walk through, but pops up to function as a desk or table. It also has a shelf for additional storage of books or tabletop doo-dads, and is easy to wipe clean.
BEST ARMCHAIR
Eames Lounge
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This is the classic. The icon. And, yes, the cliche. The Eames Lounge is iconic because it’s the best. It swivels, it’s soft, but leathery. It reclines the body into a position that kinesthetically induces relaxation. The plywood back even helps it feel more organic in any home. Just because it’s expected doesn’t make it a bad choice. It’s great.
THIRD-STRING SEATING
Kapok Mattress from GOODEE World
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When the gang comes over for movie night, or when that dinner party descends into more of a 5th bottle of wine party, seating falls away and people need a soft spot to land. These roll-up mattresses are perfect for those floor-loungers at the end of the night or laying back looking up at the movie. Stock up and leave them rolled up near the sofa in a way that invites guests to unfurl them.
BEST STANDING LAMP
Ferm Living Dou Floor Lamp
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This rattan floor lamp is the perfect way to get the texture (and trendiness) into an apartment without feeling like an early 1990s coastal grandma with a shell collection. The woven reeds on the top also release just enough light to cast an interesting glow over the room rather than an even, but ultimately dull, spread from a boring white canvas shade.
BEST BOOKSHELF
Vitsoe 606 Shelving System
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For any bibliophile, having a bookshelf that fits a whole collection and grows with the owner from apartment to apartment is key. Vitsoe has developed a customizable shelving system that can start in the current apartment and grow and expand to wrap around corners and fill whole rooms. Vitsoe’s signature shelving system has the same look now that it did at its founding in the 50s in Germany, so it’s not like it changes with the seasons the way big box furniture brands need to.
BEST RUG
Revival Vintage Rug
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Revival has an incredible collection of vintage rugs that are brought in from around the world and are always on sale. The site is also easy to use in finding a rug that meets the approximated dimensions needed for most spaces. The rugs are also pliable and shipped clean enough to lay right out on the floor.
BEST TV
Samsung Frame TV
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Are there cheap TV’s out there? Sure. But then when you’re not watching something there’s a black square just taking up space. The Samsung Frame turns your TV into an art piece by projecting some of history’s greatest works as static images without burning the actual screen (something that will happen with any TV just left on pause, which is why that stupid Roku City is animated.) There’s hundreds of artworks to choose from and download through the app.
BEST CANDLES
YIHANG Black Taper Candles
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Spending money on fancy scented candles? Okay. Spending money on fancy taper candles that intentionally have no scent? Lose this number. Stop spending money on candles that are $80 for a six-pack and just buy the bulk sets on Amazon. This moody black one is perfect to give a vibe that doesn’t require consulting your accountant.
BEST THROW BLANKET
Hermés Avalon Throw
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There are tons of throw blankets available to purchase and a lot of them are good – soft, warm, heavy, patterned – but the Avalon stands out because it is the status blanket. Yes, it’s pricey, but nobody looks at this blanket draped over a sofa arm and thinks anything less than, “Oh damn.”
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