Art Deco Accent Chair Ideas

Sit in a proper tub chair and you notice your elbows first. The arms rise to meet them at the height of the back, so the whole frame closes around you like a cupped hand. That sensation, being held rather than perched, is what separates an Art Deco chair from a modern one that only borrows the curve.

Art deco accent chair ideas measured by the curve of the back

The three rooms here show three degrees of wrap. A dark brown leather tub chair and a dark green rounded lounge chair sit with an oat modular sofa. A black faux mohair chair with an exposed wood frame keeps company with a blue sofa and white marble nesting tables. A white upholstered chair shares its room with a light gray shearling sofa and a matte black oval table. The more a back wraps, the more floor the chair claims. Our accent chairs span all three, so decide how much of a hug you want before you decide on fabric.

Tub

Tub and barrel searches are up by half this year, and the tub is the purest form of the idea. Back and arms are one continuous line, low enough that the chair never blocks a view across the room. Leather is the classic covering and the forgiving one: it creases where you sit and darkens where your hands rest, and after a few years it looks as if it was always there. Our art deco living room furniture has a few in that cognac to espresso range.

Rounded lounge

The rounded lounge chair is the tub's softer cousin: lower, wider and more padded, with the curve carried by upholstery rather than by a frame. It is the better chair for reading and the worse one for conversation, because it tips you back. Put it where someone will stay for an hour, by a window or under a lamp, and keep the tub for the spot nearest the sofa where people perch and talk.

Art deco accent chair pictures that show the wood

The mohair chair with the open frame reads as period without trying. Exposed wood framing the upholstery is one of the clearest Deco tells, and it gives the chair an outline you can see from across the room even when nobody is in it. Mohair has a short, dense pile that catches light at an angle, so the same black looks almost brown in afternoon sun and nearly graphite under a lamp. To carry that framed silhouette into case pieces and tables, look through our art deco furniture.

Green is having a moment

Searches for green Art Deco chairs have more than doubled in a year, and the dark green rounded chair in the room with the oat sofa shows why. Deep green sits between the brown woods and black lacquers of the period without fighting either, and under warm light it drops toward bottle glass rather than going gray. One green chair is plenty, so pair it with a neutral seat from our art deco sofas rather than a second green one. Two start to look like a theme.

The lighter side of Deco

The fastest climbers in the whole category are cane and bentwood, both up well over 100 percent. That is the café side of the period rather than the ocean liner side: wood steamed into curves, woven seats, frames light enough to lift with one hand. In a room already heavy with velvet and marble, a cane backed chair is the relief valve. It lets light through, and after dark its woven shadow does some of the decorating for you. For art deco accent chair inspiration across whole rooms, the Dark Luxury Lookbook mixes the heavy and the light in exactly this way.

Where the chair stands

An accent chair set square to the sofa looks like it is waiting for an interview. Angle it in by fifteen or twenty degrees and it joins the conversation. Keep it within about eight feet of the far end of the sofa, close enough to talk without raising your voice, and give it its own light: a floor lamp behind the shoulder, a small table at the arm. If you are planning the sofa side of the same room, the notes on art deco sofa ideas pair with this page.

The mistake is buying the pair. Matching Deco chairs facing each other across a coffee table is a hotel lobby, and many art deco accent chair photos online are shot in that arrangement because it photographs symmetrically. One chair of character beside a quieter seat lives better. Look back through the art deco accent chair gallery above and notice that none of the three rooms uses a matching pair.