Applying the best of formal design to your normal, unfussy home
Design lessons from fancier-than-mine homes, the always-right fabric pattern that's caught my eye and an explainer on five-minute chairs
The death of the formal dining room was all but solidified in 2020 when families were home and needed more space and finally faced the realization that entertaining wasn’t a big part of life then (and perhaps it hadn’t been for a long time).
The dining room’s decline of usefulness was felt long before this. Perhaps you experienced it just like I did: at friend’s houses, with family and at home, the dining room was rarely in use. In college, one of my friends had her dining table piled high with boxes to send back to an online merchandiser — I know she wasn’t the only one. Open-concept floor plans made it more appealing to have a dining space in the kitchen and forego the more formal space. The long-held belief that a designated dining room saves you from looking at the dishes to do while you’re trying to enjoy dinner becomes a moot point when the entire downstairs living is open to the kitchen. You’ll just learn to ignore the dishes (which is a very handy skill).
I’ve noticed how, now, homes that have broadly formal designs don’t make sense to me. Maybe it’s because I’m a little bit messy and I like for my dog to sit next to me on the couch and I don’t mind eating dinner in the living room that I have trouble with it. Do they stress over the upholstery on the sofa? Do the legs of antique furniture get nicked by the vacuum cleaner?
All of this impracticality aside, there’s an enduring appreciation and even awe for formal spaces. I remember feeling particularly compelled by Marie Antoinette’s bedroom at Versailles, which is nothing if not formal. I’ve noticed, though, that consuming visuals of all of those perfectly curated, formal rooms where everything matches or coordinates and screams that it was purchased at one time so the room would look “finished” creates this disconnect between what we consider to be a good room and what actually is a good room.
Here in Dallas, for example, we have a bit of old-fashioned, down-South tradition in how we expect homes to look. Everything should be in its place, it should match — there’s a precision to design that makes spaces more formal. I’m talking about rooms where the color scheme is clear from the start, the art was selected to match the rug or the furniture was upholstered in all white linen. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with those perfectly designed and complete spaces, but they do make it more difficult for things to evolve with life or adjust as needed. There’s rarely any room for a stack of books or old photos to sit out on the table for a few days (or weeks).
Short of you or I suddenly discovering we are the long-lost ruler of a small European country, most of us have little need for extremely formal rooms. Our lives are not that formal. I’m not talking about the dining room alone — I’m planning to keep mine — but more about how your home is arranged: matching furniture, fancy rugs and custom-commissioned art to match.
This is where the disconnect and discontentment with home often bubbles up. Magazines only ever feature homes with perfectly curated interiors that, more often than not, were photographed just after the designer installed them (not after they’ve been lived in). It’s difficult to see really beautiful rooms with their matching furniture and designer upholstery and swaths of coordinating wallpaper and not wish to have that space for yourself. Wouldn’t it be so peaceful to live in a perfectly matching room that felt complete?
I imagine I will be living in cozy, mildly cluttered spaces with collected items forever — or at least until they tell me I’ve inherited a small country. This in mind, I’ve been learning to distill the design inspiration I see in formal, perfectly curated homes into more applicable tips for my own very-normal house. For example, you can see how important a textile choice is in design when you come across a room swathed in a beautiful chintz. Formal interiors also seem to have furniture arrangements I would never have dreamed up that act as inspiration for my own home. Many of the most beautiful rooms have formal design elements reconfigured or reimagined to be practical, cozy and unfussy. There’s a clever, precise perspective evident in formal spaces that can be adopted more broadly. Let’s take a look.
Today’s newsletter is about formal interiors and design lessons to learn from them even if your home isn’t a formal space. Thanks for being here.
MIXING HIGH WITH LOW
Let’s hack the best parts of formal design for ourselves
Coordinating fabrics, luxe materials and old-world antiques are nice, sure, but there are a handful of design concepts that I’d like to pull from formal design. Here’s what I’ve noticed.
Layout
When I think of truly formal interiors, though, the first thing that comes to mind is the precisely arranged furniture — it looks to me like someone agonized over it to create the perfect layout (and someone probably did). In Hubert de Givenchy’s sitting room at Manoir du Jonchet the furniture is arranged in unique configurations. Yes, it’s a sprawling room, but there are multiple nooks and layers of furniture.
Here’s the lesson learned: Create multiple areas within a single room instead of centering all the furniture around a specific middle point. Even if it divides the space into smaller portions, it will maximize its use.
Materials
Perhaps designer Mark D. Sikes’ rooms aren’t intensely formal — he does have a sense of California casual about him — but it’s the matchy-matchy look that strikes me as polished. Often in formal homes you’ll see a mix of materials at differing levels of formality. I think it’s the abundance of materials, the layers of them, that make it feel special.
In this room he designed for the Kips Bay Show House in New York City, there’s a velvet on the side chair near the wall and ottoman, some billowy curtains in the corner and a slipcover over the armchair — plus that extremely luxurious (and formal) wallpaper from Gracie.
Here’s the lesson learned: Mix materials and, when worried about how they’ll wear in a room that gets lots of use, use the luxe materials on smaller portions and choose simple materials (like that slipcover on the chair or the bedding that looks like a classic percale) on the most-used pieces.
Use
I came across photos of Marlene Dietrich’s New York City apartment and thought the formality was beautiful. In the story you’ll read how it was barely used and somewhat abandoned — which might prove my point about formal interiors. The rooms are outfitted with glimmering silks and mirrors and giltwood furniture.
What I noticed, though, the spaces look very used (even despite the home’s abandonment). She has paper mementos tucked into the frames of photographs and stacks of items on the dressing table out for display and easy access.
Here’s the last lesson learned: Good rooms, even formal rooms, should be used. You need tables near your seating area so you can place items on them, photographs clustered to make a space feel homey and functional items out and ready to use.
EXPERT CRAFTSMANSHIP
Silk and ribbon, hand-painted tiles and beautiful art
A length of silk circa 1770 from the Getty Museum collection.
The blue ribbon is British from 1860.
“The Blue Window, Winter” by William George Gilles from by the Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture.
Bunny Mellon’s home (image source unknown). Her interiors were this mix of formal and casual. Lighter, simpler materials — often with garden motifs or patterns — coupled with formal pieces of furniture and antiques give this sort of middle ground feel.
A tile decorated by William Morris.
This room designed by David Hicks has all sorts of markers of a formal interior: antiques, gilded features (the shiny side and coffee tables and the chrome lamp), the way the curtains are tied back. Everything is in its place.
A vibrant yellow plate from the collaboration between Ginori and Cabana Magazine.
FIVE-MINUTE CHAIRS
Chairs for decoration, not for sitting
My dad calls these “five-minute chairs” — good for looking at but not for sitting on too long. Formal interiors often seem to have an abundance of side chairs. Stack a pile of blankets or books or magazines atop it and fill up an empty corner. Pick from this 20th-century needlepoint option, a Dutch hand-painted chair with a rush seat or this pretty, Victorian chair with a frilly cushion.
CHECK MATE
A timeless pattern that works in any space
A checked or gingham pattern has this incredibly adaptable appeal that seems to work in any space. Somehow, it can bridge the gap between intensely formal rooms and cozier, comfier spaces. I’ve taken notice how it’s used for the upholstery on furniture set in rooms where there’s beautiful, grand architecture or art. It softens the grandeur a little bit and makes it feel more familiar. Perhaps that’s why it works: checked patterns are so familiar in the world that it anchors a space with its straightforward simplicity.
This is certainly a grand room (are those cherubs above the doorway?) and it’s decorated with plenty of formal things: the antique table, the art, the column-style lamp and some sort of decorative item preserved under a glass cloche. The checked pattern on the chairs makes it feel a little more relaxed. The natural fiber rug helps, too.
This gingham armchair has haunted me (in a good way) since I first saw the photo a few weeks ago. This is an 18th-century London home, featured in a design book by Lisa Fine, that is full of antiques and collectibles. The rooms are this incredible mix of casual, relaxed elements coupled with formal features — for example, an art collection that includes portraits of the family’s noble ancestors.
The perfect pink gingham chair makes the space feel a little more casual and familiar, like you could nestle in with a book. There’s a matching pink gingham sofa, too.
And the Hotel Peter & Paul in New Orleans, with its incredible design of check-adorned rooms, is another example. The rooms have all of these antique furniture pieces, architectural details and a generally grand design, but the upholstery is almost exclusively a check pattern in a monochrome scheme. There are blue rooms, red rooms, green rooms and then this yellow salon. Again: the check pattern seems to bring it all down from stuffy or formal to friendly and welcoming.
GOOD CHOICE
A classic, simple napkin that feels fancy
I love cloth napkins for everyday use mostly because I don’t like the waste of paper napkins (and also because I like that they feel special). My favorite, though, the ones my grandmother taught me to look for, are napkins with a hemstitch detail. You can find hemstitch napkins in antique shops and at major retailers like Williams Sonoma or Bed, Bath & Beyond.
They work for everyday dinner or for company. And here’s another good choice: I just bought this stain remover and it works miracles.
High and low.
All the best,
Mary Grace