Classy Comfort: Designing a Modern Rustic Living Room

The living room is the heart of the home. As a place of gathering, a place of relaxation, and a showcase for your design taste, it’s doubtless one of the most important rooms to pour time and energy into. It can be an especially good place to try a theme: Art Deco flair, Modern simplicity, or even rustic warmth can all be a good fit for a living room.

Today, we want to explore how rustic décor can feel both cozy and classy. None can deny the charm of a rustic setting. And if you, too, crave a rustic living room that doesn’t feel dusty or outdated, take a trip through our catalog with us and find the perfect objects to make your living space the ideal place to relax.

What makes a Rustic Living Room?

Rustic décor is characterized by a charming simplicity. In our societal understanding of rusticity, wood plays a central role. Indeed, both natural materials and hand-crafted aesthetics define many rustic pieces in our collection.

But what makes wood furniture rustic instead of just antique? The root of the word might hold a clue: rustic comes from the Latin “rusticus”, a term for “peasant.” Rustic furniture can best be understood as being the furniture of rural origin, brought into richer, urban surroundings for purposes of charm and style.

That’s why so much rustic furniture makes us recall the aesthetic of a mountain cabin or farmhouse. They feature design decisions in line with rustic ideas, while preserving original historical design and materials, and showcasing top-end craftsmanship.

Rustic Antiques from the Styylish Catalog

It’s easiest to begin our rustic living room design with antiques. After all, they embody one of the key elements of rustic furniture already: an aged simplicity.

No piece in our collection is quite as textbook-rustic as this Swiss Farm Table. Recalling the large tables you might find in a Swiss chalet to this day, this piece is a remarkable find. Walnut and elmwood color this 18^thcentury original with light shades of caramel.

The four lathed legs and swirl-cut apron distinctly identify the Swiss origin of this farm table. But unlike many contemporary pieces, it features a richly detailed diamond-shaped veneer surface that poetically blends natural wood swirls with distinct designs. You will find no better centerpiece for your rustic living room.

Combine it with this rare exemplar of a lightly-adorned Baroque Side Table. Its chocolatey oak color brings a whole different rustic flair to the fore. The carved rocaille and flower décor are distinctly baroque. But a lack of metal accents makes this piece more understated, more mysterious, and easier to integrate into a rustic living room.

But the presence of metal doesn’t have to mean a piece isn’t rustic. Take this gorgeous Louis XVI Dresser, which features light walnut wood and brass fittings. An original from 1780 Heidelberg, it’s a dreamy German piece straight from the land of fairytales. Add this to a living room with your for a romantic escape.

Contemporary Picks for your Rustic Living Room

The best part about designing a rustic living room in our time is that so many contemporary artisans are exhuming long-forgotten traditions and approaches to create their own take on ecological rusticism. Combining any of the above antiques with some of these designer pieces will create a dynamic, cross-period sensation of rusticity that should ease any fear of your room ever feeling outdated.

Take the Sideboard “Druid”, an original from contemporary Eastern Europe, which features walnut wood. This piece can easily be combined with the Farm Table above if only to create a resonant connection between the light woods. The sideboard finds glorious whimsy in sinuous geometry and updates the tradition of diagonal legs in unprecedented ways.

For a minimalist interpretation of contemporary rusticity, take Riccardo Monte’s Wood Centerpiece “Shoko”. An original from Italy, this deceptively plain block allows oak wood to shine in its most understated form. An avant-garde piece like this will draw your rustic living room out of overbearing romance and into tasteful juxtaposition.

We would be remiss not to re-introduce one of our favorite pieces in the catalog for this piece. The Reclaimed Wood Armchair, crafted from the scrap wood of Serbian cottages, is one of our most exciting contemporary design pieces currently available.

It wants to be included in your rustic living room because it embodies the bridge between old wood traditions and modern features completely. If you place this armchair in a space with other wood-forward pieces, its dark elegance will ground your flights of fancy in cutting-edge comfort.

Summary: How a Rustic Living Room Can Feel Modern

A rustic living room doesn’t have to smell of mothballs and faded carpet. It can be a clean, crisp place, filled with carefully selected treasures, curated to create comfort without losing a modern edge.

The way to achieve this effect is to be deliberate with your choice of antiques. It’s an excellent style to juxtapose different periods within: perhaps the ideal companion for a cabin-style farm table is an unadorned Baroque dresser in combination with a contemporary armchair. The more whimsy you infuse into your selections, the more charming your rustic room will appear.

Combine it all with bright colors and modern accents, like glass vases. Then you’ve got yourself a rustic living room that feels artistically curated and bright instead of musky.

Continue browsing the Styylish catalog for unique pieces to build your dream home around. Our deliberate selections of contemporary artisans and quality antiques aim to inspire you to approach your room design in a whole new way!