Move the leg of a table.
Not very far. Perhaps only enough to change the distance between the support and the edge.
It sounds like one decision.
Except now the overhang is different. The empty space beneath the table has changed. Viewed from the end, its silhouette has changed. A chair may relate differently to the base. If the support is sculptural, perhaps its scale against the tabletop no longer feels right.
Make the support larger and another question appears.
Should the top become thicker?
Then another.
Has the table become visually too heavy?
One small movement has travelled through the entire object.
This is one of the less visible parts of furniture design. We tend to experience a finished piece as a whole. We don't consciously separate a dining table into material, proportion, support, negative space, edge profile, finish, function and visual weight.
We simply see a table.
And when all those decisions have been resolved well, the result can appear remarkably simple.
That simplicity is deceptive.
Good furniture design is rarely the result of one brilliant decision. It is what happens when many decisions—practical, structural, material and visual—begin to agree with one another.
WHAT MAKES GOOD FURNITURE DESIGN?
Good furniture design balances function, proportion, material, structure and the space around the object. The piece needs to work for the people using it, but its dimensions, supports, materials and visual details also need to make sense together. When those relationships are resolved, furniture can feel simple even when considerable thought sits behind it.
Function is the beginning, not the end.
A dining table has an obvious job. It needs to provide a useful surface, accommodate chairs and people, and work comfortably within the room. Meeting those requirements may make it functional, but it doesn't automatically make it well designed.
Now consider what happens underneath the tabletop.
Four conventional legs create one relationship. Two substantial supports create another. Three spherical supports create something different again.
The function remains recognisable.
The identity of the object changes.
At John Leighton, our three-ball dining table demonstrates this clearly. Once three substantial spherical supports sit beneath a large rectangular top, they affect far more than the appearance of the base.
Their diameter changes how substantial the tabletop feels. Their position determines the negative spaces beneath it. Their spacing changes the silhouette as someone moves around the table. The amount of top extending beyond them affects the balance of the entire piece.
And eventually, chairs and people have to join the composition.
That is the point where furniture design becomes much more interesting than styling.
A good piece is not simply a collection of attractive individual features. Each decision creates conditions for the decisions around it.
Support affects proportion.
Proportion affects visual weight.
Support position creates negative space.
Material changes how all of those things are perceived.
And everything still has to work when somebody pulls out a chair and sits down.
HOW DOES MATERIAL AFFECT FURNITURE DESIGN?
Material affects far more than the surface appearance of furniture. It changes visual weight, texture, transparency, natural variation and the way a form is perceived. Because solid timber, natural stone and glass behave and appear differently, changing the material can require the proportions, structure or details of a design to be reconsidered rather than simply reproducing the same object in another finish.
This distinction matters.
Material is sometimes treated as though it is one of the final selections: decide what the furniture looks like, then choose what to make it from.
Natural materials rarely work that neatly.
Imagine broadly the same furniture form interpreted in solid timber, dense natural stone and glass.
The outline might remain recognisable, but the object changes.
Timber brings grain, warmth and natural variation created through growth.
Stone introduces density, texture and geological movement. Even before touching it, we can perceive a different kind of visual weight.
Glass changes the relationship again. Transparency allows light, architecture and objects beyond the furniture to remain visible. At the same time, parts of the construction that could disappear inside an opaque material may become exposed.
The material has changed the question.
This is particularly clear in structural glass furniture.
With timber, a connection can sometimes disappear within the object. With glass, the eye can travel through and around the structure. Edges, intersections and supports become part of what we see.
Construction starts participating in appearance.
So the useful question isn't simply:
Which material looks best?
It is:
What does this material do to the idea?
Sometimes the original form remains right.
Sometimes the material tells you it needs to change.
At John Leighton, we prefer the second conversation to remain possible.
Timber should be allowed to behave like timber. Stone should retain the character that makes natural stone interesting. Glass should not be treated as though transparency were an inconvenience to overcome.
The material participates in the design.
WHY IS PROPORTION SO IMPORTANT IN FURNITURE DESIGN?
Proportion determines how the dimensions of furniture relate to each other and to the room around it. A tabletop can feel too heavy for its supports, a console too deep for its height or a coffee table too small beside a sofa even when every individual measurement appears reasonable. Good furniture proportions come from resolving these relationships rather than judging dimensions in isolation.
We don't really see measurements.
We see relationships.
A tabletop isn't visually thick simply because it reaches a particular number of millimetres. Its thickness is understood against its length, width, support size, height above the floor and the amount of open space beneath it.
The same applies to almost every dimension within furniture.
A support can be structurally sufficient and still look too slight.
A console can be functional and still appear too heavy.
A coffee table can have perfectly sensible dimensions on a specification sheet and look lost when placed beside a deep sofa in a large living room.
This is why small changes sometimes have surprisingly large consequences.
Move an edge.
Reduce an overhang.
Increase the diameter of a support.
Change the depth of a curve.
Nothing dramatic has happened when each adjustment is considered separately.
Yet the complete piece can suddenly settle.
Most people will never identify the measurement that changed. They may simply look at one version and feel that it works.
That is one of the fascinating things about proportion.
When it is unresolved, the eye often notices before the mind understands why.
When it is resolved, we may barely think about it at all.
PROPORTION DOESN'T STOP AT THE EDGE OF THE FURNITURE
The room introduces another set of relationships.
A dining table meets chairs.
A coffee table meets a sofa.
A console meets a wall, architecture and perhaps artwork.
A TV unit has to relate to a large screen that may be visually dominant whether the designer likes it or not.
This is why scale and proportion in furniture design cannot be resolved entirely by looking at the object alone.
Furniture has dimensions.
Its surroundings give those dimensions meaning.
WHAT IS NEGATIVE SPACE IN FURNITURE DESIGN, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Negative space is the empty area within, beneath and around furniture. It influences how heavy or open a piece appears, but it also affects circulation, legroom, sightlines and the way people move through a room. Designing furniture therefore involves shaping both the material object and the empty spaces it creates.
There is an interesting material in almost every piece of furniture that nobody has to purchase.
Empty space.
Look beneath a dining table.
The supports create shapes between them.
Look through an étagère.
The shelves and structure frame portions of the room beyond.
Look around an organic coffee table.
Its curves determine not only the shape of the top but the space remaining between the table, sofa, chairs and people moving around them.
Move one support and you haven't only moved material.
You have redesigned the emptiness beside it.
That can alter visual balance, but it can also change everyday life in surprisingly ordinary ways.
A chair needs somewhere to pull out.
A knee needs somewhere to go.
Someone carrying a drink needs enough room to move between the sofa and coffee table without thinking about the geometry that allowed them to pass.
Good negative space is often experienced this way.
Not as an obvious feature.
As ease.
The principle becomes especially interesting with substantial natural materials.
A large timber top can retain a sense of openness because of what happens underneath it. Dense natural stone can appear less visually imposing when solid mass is balanced by carefully considered space. Glass can allow architecture, light and objects to remain visible through the furniture itself.
We design what is there.
But we also design what happens where there is nothing.
HOW DO COLOUR AND TEXTURE AFFECT FURNITURE DESIGN?
Colour and texture determine where visual attention goes. Strong grain, pronounced stone movement, sculptural supports, contrasting colour and tactile finishes can all become focal points, so good furniture design establishes a hierarchy rather than asking every element to compete equally. The stronger one decision becomes, the more restraint another may require.
Every new idea costs attention.
That is worth considering beyond colour alone.
A sculptural support costs attention.
A dramatic natural stone costs attention.
A pronounced timber grain costs attention.
A strong texture costs attention.
A contrasting colour costs attention.
There is nothing wrong with spending it.
The problem begins when every part of an object wants to spend from the same account.
This is where hierarchy becomes important.
Consider a two-tone piece using natural timber. The timber already contains colour, grain and variation of its own. Introduce a second colour and another visual voice enters the piece.
What should somebody notice first?
Perhaps the contrasting element should define part of the silhouette while the timber remains dominant.
Perhaps the support already carries enough visual interest and the surrounding surfaces should become quieter.
Perhaps the natural material itself is extraordinary enough that very little else needs to happen.
There is no universal formula.
The important question is whether the decisions make each other stronger.
This is where restraint becomes much more interesting than simply making something minimal.
Restraint isn't an absence of ideas.
It is understanding which idea deserves attention, which ideas should support it and which perfectly good idea should be left out.
SHOULD FURNITURE STAND OUT OR BLEND INTO A ROOM?
Furniture should have enough identity to contribute to a room without automatically competing with everything around it. Whether a piece should stand out or recede depends on its function, scale, material, surrounding architecture and the other visually important objects already in the space. Good furniture can be distinctive while still leaving room for the home to evolve around it.
A TV unit makes this question almost impossible to avoid.
You can carefully resolve material, structure, colour and proportion and then place a large black rectangle directly above it.
The television does not care about your composition.
The TV unit has to.
One response would be to make the furniture disappear completely beneath the technology.
Another would be to make it so expressive that both objects fight for attention.
Neither has to be the answer.
A TV unit remains furniture when the screen goes dark. Its material, top, proportions and supports are still part of the room. There is no reason it must become an anonymous rectangle simply because technology sits above it.
But it also has to understand what it is sharing the room with.
That negotiation happens everywhere.
A console may eventually sit beneath a significant artwork.
An étagère may fill with books, sculpture, photographs and objects collected over decades.
A coffee table may accumulate books, flowers, cups and all the small evidence of everyday life.
And then there is the dining table.
Perhaps it begins in a photograph with nothing around it.
Then the chairs arrive.
Dinner plates.
Wine glasses.
Flowers.
Food.
Ten people.
Conversation.
The composition the designer controlled has disappeared.
But the furniture hasn't failed.
It has finally been asked to do its real job.
The best furniture should have enough identity to matter and enough generosity to leave room for life around it.
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN A FURNITURE DESIGN IS FINISHED?
A furniture design is resolved when its function, proportions, material, structure and details work together without unnecessary elements competing for attention. There may always be another feature, colour, curve or material that could be added, but a design is often finished when another idea would weaken the relationships already working well.
This may be one of the hardest decisions.
There is always another possibility.
Another curve could make the silhouette more unusual.
Another material could introduce contrast.
Another detail could make the construction more elaborate.
Another colour could make the photograph more arresting.
Design possibilities do not naturally stop.
Somebody has to stop them.
And that means a designer occasionally has to reject a good idea.
Not because the idea is bad.
Because the object no longer needs it.
If the support already gives a table its identity, perhaps the top can become quieter.
If the stone carries extraordinary geological movement, perhaps the shape doesn't need to compete with it.
If transparency has made the structure itself interesting, perhaps another decorative gesture would only distract from what is already there.
Knowing what to add is design.
Knowing when there is enough may be even more important.
Eventually, all of those individual decisions have to stop behaving like individual decisions.
Material has to agree with proportion.
Proportion with support.
Support with negative space.
Colour with texture.
The object with the room.
And the room with the people who will eventually live around it.
When those relationships resolve, something curious happens.
The complexity begins to disappear.
The person living with the furniture doesn't need to know about the support that moved, the dimension that changed, the material that forced another decision or the ideas that were deliberately removed.
They should simply be able to use it.
Pull out a chair.
Put down a glass.
Walk around the coffee table.
Place something treasured on a shelf.
Gather people around dinner.
And live with it.
Perhaps that is one of the best measures of good furniture design.
A great deal of thought can go into creating something that eventually asks very little thought from the person who owns it.
The decisions happened before they arrived.
The life happens afterwards.
Designed to Endure.
John Leighton.
FURTHER READING
National Gallery of Victoria — Melbourne, Australia
The NGV's Contemporary Design and Architecture collection explores how materials, ideas, function, technology and culture shape the objects and spaces around us. Its design writing provides broader historical and cultural context for understanding why some objects become significant beyond their immediate function.
ngv.vic.gov.au
Australian Institute of Architects — Australia
Australia's peak body for the architectural profession, offering insight into architecture, the built environment and the relationship between thoughtful design, material, proportion, place and the way people live.
architecture.com.au
Dezeen — International
An international architecture and design publication covering architecture, interiors, materials and contemporary design thinking. Useful for observing how changes in material, technology, culture and architecture continue to influence the objects and spaces being created around the world.
dezeen.com
The Local Project — Australia & International
An architecture and design publication focused on considered residential and commercial projects, with particular attention to architecture, interiors, materiality and the relationship between objects and the spaces they inhabit.
thelocalproject.com.au
Est Living — Australia & International
An architecture and interiors publication exploring contemporary homes, materials and interior environments, offering broader context for how proportion, texture, material and furniture work together within complete spaces.
estliving.com
John Leighton is not affiliated with the external institutions or publications referenced above.
COMMUNITY
Styling News explores the questions that come up when choosing furniture, materials and the way they work within a home. If there is something you would like us to explain in a future article, we welcome the conversation.
At John Leighton we design furniture around natural material, considered form and the belief that the pieces we live with should have a reason to remain.
When you look at a piece of furniture you love, what do you notice first—the material, the shape, the proportions, or simply the way the whole piece feels together?
What Makes Good Furniture Design? How Material, Proportion and Structure Work Together
Move the leg of a table.
Not very far. Perhaps only enough to change the distance between the support and the edge.
It sounds like one decision.
Except now the overhang is different. The empty space beneath the table has changed. Viewed from the end, its silhouette has changed. A chair may relate differently to the base. If the support is sculptural, perhaps its scale against the tabletop no longer feels right.
Make the support larger and another question appears.
Should the top become thicker?
Then another.
Has the table become visually too heavy?
One small movement has travelled through the entire object.
This is one of the less visible parts of furniture design. We tend to experience a finished piece as a whole. We don't consciously separate a dining table into material, proportion, support, negative space, edge profile, finish, function and visual weight.
We simply see a table.
And when all those decisions have been resolved well, the result can appear remarkably simple.
That simplicity is deceptive.
Good furniture design is rarely the result of one brilliant decision. It is what happens when many decisions—practical, structural, material and visual—begin to agree with one another.
WHAT MAKES GOOD FURNITURE DESIGN?
Good furniture design balances function, proportion, material, structure and the space around the object. The piece needs to work for the people using it, but its dimensions, supports, materials and visual details also need to make sense together. When those relationships are resolved, furniture can feel simple even when considerable thought sits behind it.
Function is the beginning, not the end.
A dining table has an obvious job. It needs to provide a useful surface, accommodate chairs and people, and work comfortably within the room. Meeting those requirements may make it functional, but it doesn't automatically make it well designed.
Now consider what happens underneath the tabletop.
Four conventional legs create one relationship. Two substantial supports create another. Three spherical supports create something different again.
The function remains recognisable.
The identity of the object changes.
At John Leighton, our three-ball dining table demonstrates this clearly. Once three substantial spherical supports sit beneath a large rectangular top, they affect far more than the appearance of the base.
Their diameter changes how substantial the tabletop feels. Their position determines the negative spaces beneath it. Their spacing changes the silhouette as someone moves around the table. The amount of top extending beyond them affects the balance of the entire piece.
And eventually, chairs and people have to join the composition.
That is the point where furniture design becomes much more interesting than styling.
A good piece is not simply a collection of attractive individual features. Each decision creates conditions for the decisions around it.
Support affects proportion.
Proportion affects visual weight.
Support position creates negative space.
Material changes how all of those things are perceived.
And everything still has to work when somebody pulls out a chair and sits down.
HOW DOES MATERIAL AFFECT FURNITURE DESIGN?
Material affects far more than the surface appearance of furniture. It changes visual weight, texture, transparency, natural variation and the way a form is perceived. Because solid timber, natural stone and glass behave and appear differently, changing the material can require the proportions, structure or details of a design to be reconsidered rather than simply reproducing the same object in another finish.
This distinction matters.
Material is sometimes treated as though it is one of the final selections: decide what the furniture looks like, then choose what to make it from.
Natural materials rarely work that neatly.
Imagine broadly the same furniture form interpreted in solid timber, dense natural stone and glass.
The outline might remain recognisable, but the object changes.
Timber brings grain, warmth and natural variation created through growth.
Stone introduces density, texture and geological movement. Even before touching it, we can perceive a different kind of visual weight.
Glass changes the relationship again. Transparency allows light, architecture and objects beyond the furniture to remain visible. At the same time, parts of the construction that could disappear inside an opaque material may become exposed.
The material has changed the question.
This is particularly clear in structural glass furniture.
With timber, a connection can sometimes disappear within the object. With glass, the eye can travel through and around the structure. Edges, intersections and supports become part of what we see.
Construction starts participating in appearance.
So the useful question isn't simply:
Which material looks best?
It is:
What does this material do to the idea?
Sometimes the original form remains right.
Sometimes the material tells you it needs to change.
At John Leighton, we prefer the second conversation to remain possible.
Timber should be allowed to behave like timber. Stone should retain the character that makes natural stone interesting. Glass should not be treated as though transparency were an inconvenience to overcome.
The material participates in the design.
WHY IS PROPORTION SO IMPORTANT IN FURNITURE DESIGN?
Proportion determines how the dimensions of furniture relate to each other and to the room around it. A tabletop can feel too heavy for its supports, a console too deep for its height or a coffee table too small beside a sofa even when every individual measurement appears reasonable. Good furniture proportions come from resolving these relationships rather than judging dimensions in isolation.
We don't really see measurements.
We see relationships.
A tabletop isn't visually thick simply because it reaches a particular number of millimetres. Its thickness is understood against its length, width, support size, height above the floor and the amount of open space beneath it.
The same applies to almost every dimension within furniture.
A support can be structurally sufficient and still look too slight.
A console can be functional and still appear too heavy.
A coffee table can have perfectly sensible dimensions on a specification sheet and look lost when placed beside a deep sofa in a large living room.
This is why small changes sometimes have surprisingly large consequences.
Move an edge.
Reduce an overhang.
Increase the diameter of a support.
Change the depth of a curve.
Nothing dramatic has happened when each adjustment is considered separately.
Yet the complete piece can suddenly settle.
Most people will never identify the measurement that changed. They may simply look at one version and feel that it works.
That is one of the fascinating things about proportion.
When it is unresolved, the eye often notices before the mind understands why.
When it is resolved, we may barely think about it at all.
PROPORTION DOESN'T STOP AT THE EDGE OF THE FURNITURE
The room introduces another set of relationships.
A dining table meets chairs.
A coffee table meets a sofa.
A console meets a wall, architecture and perhaps artwork.
A TV unit has to relate to a large screen that may be visually dominant whether the designer likes it or not.
This is why scale and proportion in furniture design cannot be resolved entirely by looking at the object alone.
Furniture has dimensions.
Its surroundings give those dimensions meaning.
WHAT IS NEGATIVE SPACE IN FURNITURE DESIGN, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Negative space is the empty area within, beneath and around furniture. It influences how heavy or open a piece appears, but it also affects circulation, legroom, sightlines and the way people move through a room. Designing furniture therefore involves shaping both the material object and the empty spaces it creates.
There is an interesting material in almost every piece of furniture that nobody has to purchase.
Empty space.
Look beneath a dining table.
The supports create shapes between them.
Look through an étagère.
The shelves and structure frame portions of the room beyond.
Look around an organic coffee table.
Its curves determine not only the shape of the top but the space remaining between the table, sofa, chairs and people moving around them.
Move one support and you haven't only moved material.
You have redesigned the emptiness beside it.
That can alter visual balance, but it can also change everyday life in surprisingly ordinary ways.
A chair needs somewhere to pull out.
A knee needs somewhere to go.
Someone carrying a drink needs enough room to move between the sofa and coffee table without thinking about the geometry that allowed them to pass.
Good negative space is often experienced this way.
Not as an obvious feature.
As ease.
The principle becomes especially interesting with substantial natural materials.
A large timber top can retain a sense of openness because of what happens underneath it. Dense natural stone can appear less visually imposing when solid mass is balanced by carefully considered space. Glass can allow architecture, light and objects to remain visible through the furniture itself.
We design what is there.
But we also design what happens where there is nothing.
HOW DO COLOUR AND TEXTURE AFFECT FURNITURE DESIGN?
Colour and texture determine where visual attention goes. Strong grain, pronounced stone movement, sculptural supports, contrasting colour and tactile finishes can all become focal points, so good furniture design establishes a hierarchy rather than asking every element to compete equally. The stronger one decision becomes, the more restraint another may require.
Every new idea costs attention.
That is worth considering beyond colour alone.
A sculptural support costs attention.
A dramatic natural stone costs attention.
A pronounced timber grain costs attention.
A strong texture costs attention.
A contrasting colour costs attention.
There is nothing wrong with spending it.
The problem begins when every part of an object wants to spend from the same account.
This is where hierarchy becomes important.
Consider a two-tone piece using natural timber. The timber already contains colour, grain and variation of its own. Introduce a second colour and another visual voice enters the piece.
What should somebody notice first?
Perhaps the contrasting element should define part of the silhouette while the timber remains dominant.
Perhaps the support already carries enough visual interest and the surrounding surfaces should become quieter.
Perhaps the natural material itself is extraordinary enough that very little else needs to happen.
There is no universal formula.
The important question is whether the decisions make each other stronger.
This is where restraint becomes much more interesting than simply making something minimal.
Restraint isn't an absence of ideas.
It is understanding which idea deserves attention, which ideas should support it and which perfectly good idea should be left out.
SHOULD FURNITURE STAND OUT OR BLEND INTO A ROOM?
Furniture should have enough identity to contribute to a room without automatically competing with everything around it. Whether a piece should stand out or recede depends on its function, scale, material, surrounding architecture and the other visually important objects already in the space. Good furniture can be distinctive while still leaving room for the home to evolve around it.
A TV unit makes this question almost impossible to avoid.
You can carefully resolve material, structure, colour and proportion and then place a large black rectangle directly above it.
The television does not care about your composition.
The TV unit has to.
One response would be to make the furniture disappear completely beneath the technology.
Another would be to make it so expressive that both objects fight for attention.
Neither has to be the answer.
A TV unit remains furniture when the screen goes dark. Its material, top, proportions and supports are still part of the room. There is no reason it must become an anonymous rectangle simply because technology sits above it.
But it also has to understand what it is sharing the room with.
That negotiation happens everywhere.
A console may eventually sit beneath a significant artwork.
An étagère may fill with books, sculpture, photographs and objects collected over decades.
A coffee table may accumulate books, flowers, cups and all the small evidence of everyday life.
And then there is the dining table.
Perhaps it begins in a photograph with nothing around it.
Then the chairs arrive.
Dinner plates.
Wine glasses.
Flowers.
Food.
Ten people.
Conversation.
The composition the designer controlled has disappeared.
But the furniture hasn't failed.
It has finally been asked to do its real job.
The best furniture should have enough identity to matter and enough generosity to leave room for life around it.
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN A FURNITURE DESIGN IS FINISHED?
A furniture design is resolved when its function, proportions, material, structure and details work together without unnecessary elements competing for attention. There may always be another feature, colour, curve or material that could be added, but a design is often finished when another idea would weaken the relationships already working well.
This may be one of the hardest decisions.
There is always another possibility.
Another curve could make the silhouette more unusual.
Another material could introduce contrast.
Another detail could make the construction more elaborate.
Another colour could make the photograph more arresting.
Design possibilities do not naturally stop.
Somebody has to stop them.
And that means a designer occasionally has to reject a good idea.
Not because the idea is bad.
Because the object no longer needs it.
If the support already gives a table its identity, perhaps the top can become quieter.
If the stone carries extraordinary geological movement, perhaps the shape doesn't need to compete with it.
If transparency has made the structure itself interesting, perhaps another decorative gesture would only distract from what is already there.
Knowing what to add is design.
Knowing when there is enough may be even more important.
Eventually, all of those individual decisions have to stop behaving like individual decisions.
Material has to agree with proportion.
Proportion with support.
Support with negative space.
Colour with texture.
The object with the room.
And the room with the people who will eventually live around it.
When those relationships resolve, something curious happens.
The complexity begins to disappear.
The person living with the furniture doesn't need to know about the support that moved, the dimension that changed, the material that forced another decision or the ideas that were deliberately removed.
They should simply be able to use it.
Pull out a chair.
Put down a glass.
Walk around the coffee table.
Place something treasured on a shelf.
Gather people around dinner.
And live with it.
Perhaps that is one of the best measures of good furniture design.
A great deal of thought can go into creating something that eventually asks very little thought from the person who owns it.
The decisions happened before they arrived.
The life happens afterwards.
Designed to Endure.
John Leighton.
FURTHER READING
National Gallery of Victoria — Melbourne, Australia
The NGV's Contemporary Design and Architecture collection explores how materials, ideas, function, technology and culture shape the objects and spaces around us. Its design writing provides broader historical and cultural context for understanding why some objects become significant beyond their immediate function.
ngv.vic.gov.au
Australian Institute of Architects — Australia
Australia's peak body for the architectural profession, offering insight into architecture, the built environment and the relationship between thoughtful design, material, proportion, place and the way people live.
architecture.com.au
Dezeen — International
An international architecture and design publication covering architecture, interiors, materials and contemporary design thinking. Useful for observing how changes in material, technology, culture and architecture continue to influence the objects and spaces being created around the world.
dezeen.com
The Local Project — Australia & International
An architecture and design publication focused on considered residential and commercial projects, with particular attention to architecture, interiors, materiality and the relationship between objects and the spaces they inhabit.
thelocalproject.com.au
Est Living — Australia & International
An architecture and interiors publication exploring contemporary homes, materials and interior environments, offering broader context for how proportion, texture, material and furniture work together within complete spaces.
estliving.com
John Leighton is not affiliated with the external institutions or publications referenced above.
COMMUNITY
Styling News explores the questions that come up when choosing furniture, materials and the way they work within a home. If there is something you would like us to explain in a future article, we welcome the conversation.
At John Leighton we design furniture around natural material, considered form and the belief that the pieces we live with should have a reason to remain.
When you look at a piece of furniture you love, what do you notice first—the material, the shape, the proportions, or simply the way the whole piece feels together?