From badly faded upholstery to uneven chair legs, sometimes older pieces of furniture require an overhaul in repairs. In cases like these, when a new coat of varnish alone won’t work, don’t just junk your old furniture. Instead, think of this as a golden opportunity to modernize it with splashes of daring paint colors, contemporary hardware, and brilliant fabrics.
To inspire your own furniture transformations, we rounded up the best examples of throwback pieces that found new life. In each example, a forward-thinking designer took an older, traditional piece of furniture that needed a lot of work and modernized it while allowing the pieces to exude style with their classic shapes and forms. Here, six times designers modernized old furniture into modern classics.
A Modernized Mini Bench
Designer and owner Colleen Simonds of Colleen Simonds Design in Pittsburgh has an aesthetic approach that fuses color with clean lines while gesturing to tradition. She updated this mini bench with bold dark hues and fabrics. “I love to reupholster and reimagine old furniture—it can be the quickest, most cost-effective way to get something one of a kind for your home,” she says.
1970s Milo Baughman Style Dining Chairs
Nancy Evars, designer and CEO at Evars Collective in San Carlos, California, loves modernizing furniture with new fabrics. She recently purchased six 1970s Milo Baughman–style dining chairs from Chairish. “I loved the shape and the style,” she says. She brought them to Revitaliste, which specializes in refurbishing furniture. “There, we powder coated the frames in an oxblood red finish and reupholstered the seats and backs in Serena Dugan’s Oletta fabric.” The end result is a unique blend of mid-mod meets contemporary design.
A Peacock Blue Buffet
For Kristina Phillips of Kristina Phillips Interior Design in Ridgewood, New Jersey, reupholstering and repainting older pieces is not just good sustainability practice, “it also brings history and character to a space,” she says. In this dining room, the buffet was lacquered a peacock blue, then lucite feet were attached and new hardware installed. “Oftentimes these vintage pieces are better constructed than modern replicas, making it a worthwhile investment,” she says.
Schumacher Vanderbilt Velvet Chairs
Some of Sarah Storms’s favorite pieces in her home are gifted antiques. The New Jersey–based Styled by Storms owner and designer has a pair of petite club chairs from her mother. “She had them recovered in this peach-and-mint flame stitch fabric,” says Storms. Wanting them to flow with the design of her own home a bit more, Storms had the chairs reupholstered in Schumacher Vanderbilt Velvet. “I love the modern-cut velvet pattern with the original wood, which was shined up.”
An Updated Antique Chest
This antique wood chest just needed some new hardware. According to Lauren Robbins, owner and lead designer at Lauren Robbins Interiors in Augusta, Georgia, “While many people were quick to repaint wooden chests, we are seeing that brown furniture is back.” So a beautiful family heirloom with details such as inlaid wood doesn’t need much of an update beyond new hardware. Or opt to modernize your sleek wood chest of drawers by updating the art and accessories around it, says Robbins. “The contrast between a 200-year-old chest and a modern fixture can elevate the space.”
Neoclassical Louis XVI Style Chairs
These chairs needed new paint and fabric. Designer and owner Nadia Watts of Nadia Watts Interior Design in Denver had the wood refinished and then painted the frames with a pleasant blueish-gray shade. “We reupholstered the seats and backs with two distinct fabrics and added a braid trim as a welt,” she says. Using two different fabrics created “an element of interest and provided more room for creative expression with color, pattern, and texture,” she says
