Tips to Acing the Trend of Mismatched Dining Chairs

What’s the next-best thing to a perfectly matched dining room set? A mismatched dining room set!

That may make us sound like those people who enjoy mismatched socks*, but hear us out. It’s not that we like throwing together random chairs we found on hard rubbish. There is method to our madness! What if we told you you could coordinate mismatched decor in such a way that they actually…eventually…matched? Trust us on this one.

In this case, ‘complementary’ is probably a better word than ‘mismatched’. ‘Mismatched’ tends to describe eclectic items that don’t mesh. In this case, the chairs are carefully selected to complement and sometimes contrast one another. There is some overlap with accent chairs here, which are used sparingly to add focal points to a room.

Without further ado, let’s crack into the good stuff. Here are our tips for acing the trend of mismatched dining chairs. (*And, for the record, there are sock brands that mismatch socks deliberately. It looks great, by the way.)

A quirky use of mismatched dining chairs. This probably wouldn’t fly in the family home, but we’re digging the funky cafe vibe that these mismatched chairs help to create.

Keep it Same-Same, But Different

If you want to start subtle, choose chairs that look similar at a glance—but not too similar. Ironically, if the chairs appear too alike, they too will mismatch—but in a bad way. It will look like you were going for a perfectly matched set but had to compensate with a couple of almost-identical chairs.

Choose chairs with a similar colour, shape, and/or size. For example, if your dining setting features a timber table with timber chairs, consider choosing a few chairs in a slightly darker shade of timber. The design doesn’t need to be identical, but so long as you keep the sizing consistent (and the styling similar enough), these colour variations will make the chairs look like siblings rather than twins. And while we love the #twinning vibe, we know that variety can also be the spice of life.

Sibling chairs: not separated at birth per se, but definitely from the same family.

Experiment With the Captain’s Chairs

Quick clarification: captain’s chairs = end chairs. These are those chairs that sit either end of a typically longer and rectangular dining table. They don’t work so well with short or circular tables. (On a completely unrelated note, does anyone else now feel like some Captain’s Table crackers with hummus? … Just us? … Okay.)

It’s often thought that people who sit in captain’s chairs are ‘heads of the household’. To reinforce this sentiment, you can make bold choices with your captain’s chairs. This is an example of accent chairs, as discussed earlier.

How do you emphasise your end chairs? Choose something larger and in a bolder (or at least different yet complementary) colour. Ensure not to choose something too oversized, or else your ‘heads of household’ will be elevated above everyone else. (To be fair, this is kind of the point, but we didn’t mean ‘elevated’ in terms of height.)

Image Source: 1825 Interiors

Another way to make your end chairs stand out is to experiment with different shapes. You’d be surprised how shape variations—such as the shape of a chair’s back—can add visual interest and offset other aspects of the dining room. Don’t be afraid to mix and match with styles, either. Sure, rustic timber chairs would be a poor choice against a formal dining setting, but maybe something more formal would help lift up a plain timber theme. So long as you can find colours that match, contrast, or offset their surroundings, your captain’s chairs should accentuate your dining room to perfection.