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What is a modern contemporary living room furniture style?

Modern Contemporary Living Room Furniture ExampleModern living room furniture refers to a style of home furniture for your living room or common rooms that blends modern concepts with contemporary design elements. Modern styles are grounded in the architectural, design, and art concepts of modernism and created using a blend of principles from the modern era (with designations for early, mid-century, or modern contemporary) within a framework of contemporary concepts for powerfully appealing aesthetics and trending popularity.

The specifics of the modern style are often referenced historically, with Mid-Century Modern, for example, referring to a time frame that spans from the 1920’s to 1950’s.

The key components of the modern contemporary blend are clean unadorned flowing lines, natural glowing materials, polished metal, and simple clear glass additions.

When selecting a furniture store to best suit your interior design needs, the term modern-contemporary is a catch-all for both styles individually as well as blended. Stores that sell modern, contemporary, or modern contemporary, will provide a selection of higher end furniture that combines the best of the modern design with the trends and popularly evolving facets of contemporary thought process and refined aesthetics.

When you are investing in a modern living room furniture design, you want your pieces to blend well, have an airy and open feel, and raise off the ground. Typically, you are adding your pieces to a space with white walls for a larger and more expansive feeling, or adding white/light pieces to a darker or gray wall color for the highlighted pop that will work with your sources of natural and artificial light to really bring the design home.

Since most modern contemporary designers will lean towards white, gray, navy, or some earthy neutral tone for the furniture, you need to get creative with the pops of color. Rugs are one of the great ways to bring colors together and hold a design vision in place.

But modern designs also heavily emphasize bare floors, either around the rugs or in totality. The modern design that is typical of Mid-Century Modern is more commonly referred to as classic or retro these days, and when you are purchasing modern living room furniture, you will be able to choose from looks inspired from this era as well as more non-retro modern designs that are a blend of modern and contemporary.

Modern living room furniture is typically both a concept and a design as well as a time period. And while the modern era is very well defined, the modern concept for clean furniture designs is a bit more flexible towards taste. 

What is a contemporary living room furniture style?

Contemporary Living Room Furniture ExampleContemporary living room furniture is known for its fluid and less-defined nature than mid-century modern. Contemporary living room furniture is as diverse as each of us. The individual nature of the concept allows for a greater range of concepts, designs, colors, and aesthetic elements all revolving around the central concepts inherent to modern and contemporary furniture. These concepts include clean looks, pleasing designs, neutral colors brought to life with moderate hints of color, accent pieces, and open feels emphasized by whites, lights, and cunning placements. 

When you are browsing for contemporary living room furniture, you will find that while many items or stores use the term modern liberally, the contemporary elements will be the central focus as they allow for a broader range of concepts and a true synergy with our modern roots.

If you like the blended concepts of modern and contemporary then feel free to utilize both designs in whatever proportions you prefer with a true aesthetically pleasing result. If you prefer to emphasize mid-century modern or late modern over contemporary then your best bet is to hire an experienced designer who understands the nuances of each and can craft the look you want from the subset of items available. We are happy to provide references for local designers if you want.