The Astoria Chair — Why an Occasional Chair Changes a Room More Than a New Sofa

We built the Help me Pick Textiles Styling Tool for the person who's standing in their living room at 9pm trying to decide whether a cushion will work and shouldn't have to guess. The question we kept hearing was the same one: "I like the cushion but I don't know if it'll work with what I've already got." Fair question. You're looking at a stylised product photo on a white background and trying to imagine it on your sofa, next to your rug, in your light. It's a hard ask. Most stores answer it with a "shop the look" page — here's a sofa, here are the cushions that go with it, buy all four. That only works if you're starting from scratch, which most people aren't. The Help me Pick Textiles Styling Tool starts from what you've got. You show it your room — an uploaded photo — and it reads the tones, textures and materials already in your space. Then it recommends cushions, throws and linen that would sit well alongside them. Not matching. Mixing. The difference matters. Matching means everything comes from the same palette, the same moment, the same decision. It's how display homes work. Mixing means the pieces arrive at different times, from different places, and still read as one room because the tonal range holds together. That's how real homes work — and it's what the tool is designed to support. → Try the Styling Tool now What it actually does: it analyses the dominant tones and material character in your photo and groups them into a style profile — contrast, tonal or balanced. Contrast rooms have strong light-dark interplay. Tonal rooms sit in a narrow colour range. Balanced rooms split the difference. Your profile determines which pieces get recommended, and the recommendations are drawn from our live catalogue — every cushion, throw, and linen piece we carry, tagged to the style system. You don't need to know your profile to use it. You upload. It reads. It recommends. If you disagree with the results, that's fine — your eye is the final call, not the algorithm. The tool is a starting point, not a verdict. Why we built it as a tool rather than a blog post or a styling guide: because the answer is different for every room. A guide can tell you "pair linen with linen" or "add texture contrast." It can't look at your specific sofa, your specific rug, your specific light, and tell you which exact cushion would work. The Styling Tool can — or at least, it gets close enough that you're deciding between two options instead of forty. It's one of the things that makes Coastalis different from other homewares sites. Less coordinated. More collected. → Try it now  

There's a moment after everyone sits down when I look at the table and know whether it's working or not. A dining table that looks ready to use is different from a dining table that's been set. One invites you to sit down. The other makes you feel like you're about to mess something up. The difference is usually three things: what's in the middle, what the light is doing, and whether the table looks like it exists between meals — not just during them. Starting in the middle. You don't need a centrepiece. You need something that holds the centre of the table without blocking the person across from you. A low bowl — ceramic, stoneware, something with weight — with dried native stems or a couple of cut branches from the garden does the job. It doesn't need to be flowers. It doesn't need to be elaborate. It needs to be low enough that you can see over it and interesting enough that it earns its place on the table when nobody's eating. If your table is reclaimed elm or has a strong natural grain, the centrepiece should be simple. The table is already doing the visual work. A single ceramic bowl in a neutral tone — sand, raw clay, stone — sits quietly and lets the timber carry the room. → Shop ceramics and vessels Then the candlestands. This is where our range earns its spot. Hand-forged iron with visible hammer marks — they look like they've always been on the table, not like they arrived yesterday. Set two or three at different heights, off-centre. Not symmetrical. Slightly grouped, the way you'd place things without thinking about it. The irregularity is the whole point — it's what makes a table feel collected rather than arranged. → Shop the range Linen on the table — and by this I mean napkins, not a tablecloth. A tablecloth on a timber dining table is like putting a case on a phone you chose for the colour. The table is the surface. Let it show. Linen napkins in a tonal colour — flax, natural, oatmeal — folded once and set beside the plate. Nothing fancy. The napkin is there to be used, not admired. The Vintage Brass Rasa Lassi Cups are the kind of thing people pick up and turn over in their hands. Hand-engraved, each one slightly different. They work as water tumblers, small vessels for herbs, or just objects that sit on the table and give people something to touch. That's an underrated quality in tableware — the invitation to pick something up. Glassware rounds it out. The hammered glass tumblers in smoke catch the light differently at every angle. They're not matching sets in the traditional sense — the hand-finishing means each one varies slightly. A table set with four of them looks put together without looking purchased as a set. A well-set table tells a story about the meals that have happened on it. The bowl that came from a trip. The candlestands that darken with use. The glasses with the small imperfections that tell you a person made them. Less matching. More memory. → Browse all collections

Most people buy a console and then stand in front of it wondering what goes on top. I've done it. You put too much on, it looks cluttered. Not enough, it looks like you forgot to finish the room. And the wall above it is either empty or has something hanging there that you chose in a hurry and haven't thought about since. A console is one of the hardest pieces to get right because it's doing three jobs at once — it's holding things, it's grounding a wall, and it's setting the tone for whatever room or hallway it lives in. Get it right and it anchors the whole space. Get it wrong and it just looks like a shelf with things on it. Here's how I think about it. The console itself does most of the work. If the material has presence — visible grain, reclaimed timber, hand-finished edges — you don't need to dress it up. The Marlow Console is a good example of this. It's reclaimed pine, hand-finished, and the surface has enough character on its own that you could put a single object on it and walk away. The piece earns the wall without needing to be propped up by everything around it. If your console is cleaner or lighter —  plain timber, pale oak, something with a smoother finish — it needs more help from the objects on top. That's not a criticism. It's just how different materials work. A quiet console benefits from bolder objects. A bold console benefits from restraint. On top: odd numbers, varied heights, and no more than five objects. A tall piece on one side — a vase, a lamp, a candlestand. Something low in the middle — a bowl, a tray, a small stack of books. And one smaller object on the other end to balance without mirroring. Three to five things total. If you're reaching for a sixth, you've gone past the point. The materials on the console should talk to each other without matching. Ceramic next to timber next to forged iron. A hand forged candlestand in black iron next to a stoneware vase next to a linen-bound book. Three textures, no repeats. That's what makes a console look collected — like the objects arrived over time, not in a single delivery. → Shop console tables Above: the mirror question. Nine times out of ten, a mirror is the right call above a console. It bounces light, it fills the wall without adding visual weight, and it gives you a reference point when you walk past. A rattan or Malawi mirror is a natural partner for timber consoles because the weave adds texture without competing with the grain below. If the console sits in an entry, go round. It softens the corridor. If it's in a living room or dining room, you can go bigger or more rectangular depending on the wall. The one thing to avoid is hanging the mirror too high. The centre of the mirror should sit roughly at eye level — which for most people is somewhere around 150–160cm from the floor. Too high and it reflects the ceiling. Too low and it reflects the console. Neither is the point. → Shop mirrors Underneath: this is the space most people forget. A basket on the floor under a console gives the arrangement weight and grounds it to the room. It also hides whatever you'd otherwise shove in a drawer you don't have. Shoes, keys, the mail you haven't dealt with. A console done well looks like it's been that way for years — not styled, just used. That's the whole idea. Less coordinated. More collected. → Browse decor