Design expert Russell Brightwell reveals how to style a coffee table in 5 simple steps. Go from junk pile to just perfect.

What’s on your coffee table? Takeout containers? Magazines? Your feet? Is it empty, perhaps, because the dog would clear the whole thing off with one tail wag?

Interior Design: Alice Cottrell Interior Design, Styling: Russell Brightwell, Floral: Keep & Co

Interior stylist Russell Brightwell, wants to help you transform your coffee table from tragic to terrific, achieving a look that’s both curated and polished. After all, a coffee table is often a major focal point in a room. Why not be proud of it, rather than embarrassed by it?

Brightwell should know. After spending 30 years as an advertising creative executive in New York, London and Houston, he created a new buying experience, working directly with the clients and interior designers to create the depth and texture that can make a room sing, pulling from his current inventory and gathering from an international resource network. He can pull together a room, or a coffee table within, in his sleep.

Lucky us! He’s letting Really Rather readers know:

HOW TO STYLE A COFFEE TABLE

Divide & Conquer

Create an organizing principle by dividing the surface into equal sections. A large square table would be split into quadrants, while a bench style table might be divided into 3 sections. This will give you a place to start and a way to keep the surface looking purposeful.

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