Buffets for the living room: varieties and tips for choosing

A buffet is a special type of furniture that is designed to store various utensils, all kinds of decor items, as well as sometimes various food products. Previously, this item was placed in the living room, the owners put on its shelves the most beautiful and expensive dinner sets and crystal to demonstrate to the guests the viability of their family.

Many modern housewives seriously believe that the buffet is an outdated type of furniture, and therefore not suitable for decorating the interior. Actually any cupboard for utensils will be able to unrecognizably transform the design of the kitchen, guest room or dining room, if it is correctly entered into the existing interior.

In its classical form, it has 3 parts:

• at the bottom there is a storage unit in the form of a small cabinet - either with drawers or with swing doors (they can be combined);
• up there are open shelves or a cabinet with swing type doors, sometimes with glass inserts;
• between the top and bottom often there is an empty space that can play the role of a countertop or the most convenient plane to showcase beautiful dishes for guests and household to see.

By internal features, this type of product has its own classification.

• Corner buffet. Great for large rooms where you do not need to save space.

• Slide. This is another type of sideboard, which is most often purchased for oversized rooms. These types of designs are usually equipped with a place for a TV.

• Buffets which are used as cabinets for the purpose of storage of household items - appliances, linen, household items. This cabinet design is usually equipped with transparent doors. Nowadays, cupboards are not very popular and are extremely rare.

• Hanging type. Models that are hung on the wall. It is best to place them in the kitchen, as it is here that they can perfectly fit into the work area.

• A familiar chest of drawers looks very close to a traditional sideboard if it is supplemented with doors that swing open or slide apart. Such a sideboard chest is in demand in oversized premises.

• Showcases. A sideboard showcase is needed to complement the beautiful interior of the room with the help of luxurious services, sets of expensive porcelain, wine glasses made of crystal.

There are no specific, clear standards for buffers. You can always choose a cupboard of the size you need, for example, depending on the height of the ceilings in your home or on the size of the kitchen unit.

By the width of the models, you can also find many different options - from very narrow products with single-leaf doors to solid cupboards with a sufficiently capacious system for storing things and products.

The ratio of the size of the buffet with the parameters of the room should be clearly thought out. A bulky design should not be placed in a small room, and on the contrary, a mini sideboard may not be the best option for a large room.

All buffet models today can be classified according to the materials from which they are made.

When producing expensive buffets, natural wood is used. In this case, sideboards are more often produced in Baroque or Rococo styles, as well as Empire style. The array is still considered a symbol of wealth in the furniture industry, wooden furniture gives the room solidity and presentability.

Metal furniture is most often seen in offices and other non-residential premises. This kind of bulky sideboard in the house is most often a stylish piece of furniture that relates to expensive antiques.

One of the most popular furniture materials on the modern market. Models made of MDF have a long service life, a wealth of colors, a stylish appearance and original texture, as well as a certain level of strength.

Glass cupboards always look elegant and spacious. They allow you to visually make a small room wider.

Each style has its own color composition, which allows you to emphasize its main aspects.

• IN classic product execution can be produced in golden or chocolate, milk and beige colors.
• For provence lilac or pink colors of the decoration of the sideboards are characteristic, also on the facades of products drawings may be present in the form of colors or outlines of cities.
• Shabby chic distinguished by discreet colors - mint, lemon, sand. On the door must be frayed.
• Country buffets are available in bright colors.
• Fashionable colors modern - from light brown colors to rich black.
• In style models loft dark or beige colors prevail.
• Furniture for style retro involves the active use of black and white, red and green colors.
• Buffet color palette minimalist style - from chocolate to beige, wenge color is often found.

Depending on the type, color and design of the sideboard, its model fits well with a certain interior style.

Models are available from solid wood. Most often these are white elegant items for storing expensive porcelain or fragile crystal. This type of buffet is distinguished by its curved legs, decorative carved tops, as well as the presence of stained glass or frosted glass.

Antique products in this style are antique or produced in modern production and are styled antique. Vintage models are characterized by an open top and a closed bottom, small shelves in the middle of the structure. Sideboards decorated in the Provence style are made of wood and MDF.

This style implies a romantically decorated sideboard. On the doors of the cabinets, as a rule, there are scuffs and floral motifs - calm drawings of lavender, a discreet rural landscape. This is a very restrained style. Often such a product may even be without glass, and the shelves remain open.

This is a decoration in the rustic direction. The style is a bit naive, simplified, but at the same time cozy. Sideboards can consist of either one or two or three sections; they have doors with fairly thin glass.

The Art Nouveau sideboard will have simple streamlined shapes with soft lines, conciseness and creative decor. Buffets are often decorated with floral patterns.

A product in such a design will not look very standard. There will be no glasses in this model, instead of them mesh doors are used - art forging can be used here. The legs of the sideboard will be fragile, on the facades chains can be located, various inserts and fashionable decor.

The sideboard in retro style also has thin legs, but at the same time a very elongated case. Characteristic of him combination of smooth rounded shapes and functionality. The sideboard is produced from MDF, but it can also have decorative inserts made of plastic, original oval fittings.

This style is diverse. Here you can easily find Japanese and Indian, Chinese and Egyptian national motifs.

They will all be distinguished by their appearance: the presence of ethnic motifs, the frequent use of natural materials. For example, the ethnic oriental style will give the sideboard a large number of delicate details, stylish handmade carvings, mesh sashes, and the Japanese version will differ in the shape of a triangle, simplicity and calm tones.

The sideboard in this popular style will have a straight and strict outline, here you will not find a single extra detail. For the manufacture of the buffet, oak veneer, particleboard and MDF are used. The fittings in such a cupboard will either be invisible to the eye, or it will imitate the material of the cabinet itself.

To make the stylish buffet stand out in the finished kitchen interior, but at the same time successfully maintain integrity design, you just need to choose a product either in the same style as the kitchen furniture, but in a different color, or in a similar color version, but with a different texture or a different style.

A sideboard can be released from the same type of wood as a table with chairs or a glass top can 100% repeat the inserts on the doors of the product.

One of the bold ways to decorate a buffet is to make it an accent in the created interior. A bright and colorful sideboard can become the only and unique accent component in a voluminous and bright kitchen or a large dining room.

There are a number of points that you should definitely consider when choosing this type of furniture.

• When buying a buffet, you need first of all pay attention to the material from which it was made. It is best to give preference to natural wood - pine, cedar, oak. The thing is that the quality of the performance of furniture made of chipboard will be lower, although the low cost allows you to make the manufactured product more affordable.

• Pay attention also to the possibility of disassembling the sideboard. Collapsible models are considered very simple and extremely convenient to use, because they can be quite easily brought home disassembled, as well as neatly transported if necessary. Non-separable options to transport much more difficult, but their main advantage will be greater durability and enviable strength.

• The quality of the hardware used should also be taken into account.. Since during use you will often open and close the doors of the product, poor fittings will lead to frequent breakdowns of the buffet.

• During the selection of the buffet It’s worthwhile to calculate in advance what area your living room or kitchen has. If the room is spacious enough, you can safely purchase large furniture, which has the ability to emphasize all the advantages of the interior.

If there is a niche in your dining room or kitchen, then it can be used competently for the installation of a new buffet.

In modern kitchens and dining rooms you can often see vintage sideboards. It is worth knowing that many modern models, even in the traditional form, specially aged with the help of different design techniques.

Large sideboards, which are installed along the entire wall, look good only in large rooms. That is why they are in such high demand among the owners of private homes.

The following video provides an overview of the buffet, suitable for a classic living room interior.