Chinese Sideboard: Add Storage, Enhance Your Space and Add a Touch of the Unexpected
The sideboard is that piece of furniture we rely on when we need something decorative to fill in an awkwardly empty space in our living or dining rooms, and when we need some extra space for storage but we don’t want it to be too obvious. Yes, we women can be pretty demanding when it comes to choosing furniture elements for interior decoration purposes, but then again, if we weren’t, our rooms and homes would look like a mess without any direction of style, colour and material.
In this post I’ll concentrate on one very appealing style of sideboards coming from the far East: the Chinese sideboard. It’s mainly suitable for vintage homes, for rooms designed with more traditional and kind of old elements, but with a certain modern charm. Choosing a Chinese sideboard is a rather easy task if you take into consideration a few important factors.
Contents
Fine storage space yes, but it should be enough as well
If you have that awkwardly empty space that we mentioned before, particularly in your dining room, don’t over think it too much – an addition like a Chinese sideboard would fit in perfectly. If you have an empty space it’s only natural to assume that your dining room isn’t too crowded with decorative elements and other furniture so you can easily fit this Old World style into the existing pattern. Make sure the sideboard is large enough besides being of a fancy design. That means you should be able to fit in a set of cutlery, table cloths, serving bowls, glassware and similar elements that you’d need in the kitchen.
However…
Just because you’d use a sideboard to fill in an empty space in your dining or living room, it doesn’t mean that it should be extra large to take most of your visual spatial pattern and throw a shadow on your dining set or the sofas and coffee table. The sideboard should be large enough to offer storage that’s actually going to be functional, but also small enough and cute as not to be a dominate piece of furniture. The sideboard should be an addition, not a focal point, creating element in a room.
Yes, a sideboard can be more than just a storage option
The sideboard’s doors can easily be used as a platform for a small artistic interpretation. If your room isn’t too crowded with decorations and colours, you can easily make that platform your largest decorative element. Draw a pattern, a picture or simply a fun colour scheme which will complement your room design. This is relatively easy to be performed because Chinese sideboards are generally made of a colour friendly material which allows painting them with various colours. Go a step further and complement all that with a flower arrangement on top of the board, or a similar decoration in the same nuance.