Decorating your home with different styles of French furniture is a great way to display your personality and refined taste. You can choose from contemporary, traditional or even antique pieces of furniture to enhance the decor and value of your home. Whatever style you choose should be stylish and comfortable for you. Some styles are distinctive with designs such as those belonging to the restoration periods etc.
The many varieties and choices of French furniture each offer individual features unique to the specific category. Louis XIV is one of the French kings who enjoyed a long reign spanning more than seventy years. He developed a particular furniture style during this period which he based on the Palace of Versailles.
The style developed during his reign was based on baroque furniture featuring rounded forms, edges and curved lines. Most of the furniture also had carvings, bronze gilding, scrolled legs and a fine metallic leaf on the top. Most were crafted of oak, walnut and ebony accented with pear, holly, boxwood and almond etc. The motifs were heads of sphinxes, masks, sun emblems, fleur-de-lis and satyrs.
The French restoration period furniture is tied to King Louis XVII. The traditional renewal of the Greek, Roman and Egyptian ornamentation is clearly seen in addition to the geometrical shapes, decorations, lines, musical instruments and brass inlaying. During this period lighter wood use became popular and so walnut, satinwood, sycamore elm and flecked maple came into use with accents crafted of mahogany, rosewood and ebony.
French restoration period furniture was much smaller than other periods and around 1650 the French provincial and country style furniture began to come into production. To this day these are still reproduced due to their very special design and appeal. The fact it copied furniture styles of the day from large cities such as Lyon and Paris added to the appeal and most of the furniture was produced with iron rather than the more common bronze.
The French countryside furniture did not use exotic wood varieties for making furniture. They did not even have the means of importing such types of woods like mahogany or rosewood. So they made use of local timber like fruit tree woods, walnut, beech and oak etc. Many people still prefer to use the country style French furniture and mirror furniture to decorate their homes.
Known for the classic beauty and bucolic charm, country furniture is also an option for your kitchen. A French kitchen style generally utilizes a large farm table in the center of the kitchen. Secondhand furniture and colors associated with the French countryside can really help pull together the look and feeling of an older French country kitchen.
Colors especially associated with the country style French furniture can make a difference. Most commonly associated is white and you can achieve the look by whitewashing your secondhand piece. Using pieces with country scenes including blue, lavender, green and yellow in them to upholster the furniture will really help bring out the French appeal.
Author Resource:
For the classic look with style, you must furnish your home with lovely french furniture . It looks elegant in any room and with such super mirrored furniture collections on offer, it pays to shop around for the best deals.