A Bold Bench is Just What Your Boring Living Room Seating Arrangement Needs

Benches look great in hallways and under windows. They function perfectly in an entryway. They’re a surprising but useful addition to a dining room furniture set. But in living rooms they’re often to relegated to the sidelines — along the walls — and usually housing some decor vignette.

There’s nothing wrong with benches in your living room looking pretty. But they can do so much more. Pull a bold bench into the heart of your living room — into your seating arrangement — for an interesting addition to the look of the whole room.

Use a bold bench in your living room seating arrangement in two visually impactful ways:

It’s not that you can’t sit on a coffee table; you of course can. But using a bench as a coffee table, whether made of a hard material or soft and upholstered, just gives a bit of sturdiness and double function to your living room seating arrangement that a coffee table can’t always do by itself. It’ll invite the usual styling and vignette arranging, but it might also invite sitting, leaning, and other more physical activities that a coffee table might be too dainty to host.

Or forget the side chairs and pull a bench into your actual seating arrangement to round out the area. It’s not always used so it can be surprising, but its shape and style can also help define a seating area more than a set of a chairs can, but less imposing as say, another couch. Its low height can be less visually upsetting than a high couch, letting it be a divider without blocking the view. It can be ultra versatile as an extra table or a seat, changing as the room’s needs evolve over time.