Accent Chairs You Buy for Looks and Keep for Reading

An accent chair is allowed to be a little impractical. It is the one seat in the room chosen for its shape or its color, the piece that does for a living room what a good pair of shoes does for a plain suit. People buy one to fill the empty corner by the window or to sit across from the sofa, and they pick it with their eyes.

Then something happens. The chair turns out to be where the morning coffee gets drunk and the library book gets finished, and within a month it is somebody’s chair. That is worth planning for. A back high enough to lean into, arms at the right height for a book, and a seat you can turn toward the window or the conversation all count for a good deal once you are sitting down.

So choose with your eyes, and then imagine an hour in it.

Welax Cove Swivel Accent Chair

Built like a spool, the Cove is all curves. A round seat rests on a waisted pedestal, the low back wraps around behind in a wide band, and every surface is covered in nubbly ivory boucle, with the frame hidden from view.

The seat turns in a full circle, and that is what makes it so useful between two parts of a room. Face the sofa for conversation, then swing round to the window or the fire. It is small and armless, a good fit beside a bookcase or at a dressing table as well as in the living room.

Janoray Mid-Century Sling Accent Chair

The Janoray takes its cue from the safari chairs and sling seats of the 1950s and 60s. A frame of pale round wooden poles carries a deep cushion of tan faux leather, and the cushion rests on a row of dark straps woven across the seat rail, which you glimpse from the side.

Because the frame is open, the chair looks light for its size, and the room stays visible through it. The caramel color sits well with white walls and black metal, and just as well with deep green paint. Throw a sheepskin over one arm in winter.

Homrest Wingback Accent Chair With Ottoman

Put your feet up. That is the whole argument for a chair with a footstool, and here the two come as a pair, covered in the same mottled brown fabric with the look of old saddle leather. Deep buttons pull the tall back into diamonds, and the wings at the top give your head somewhere to rest.

Black tapered legs keep it from looking heavy. With the ottoman pulled close, the chair is a place for a long read or an afternoon nap, and when the floor is needed the stool tucks to one side.

HOMCOM Velvet Shell Accent Chair

Scalloped like an oyster shell, the back of this HOMCOM chair is divided into deep rounded channels that fan out behind the sitter. In sapphire blue velvet, with a fat round seat cushion and four slender gold legs, it has the glamour of a 1930s cinema foyer. It is a party piece, and happiest where it can be seen from the front. Try it in a bedroom corner beside a mirror, or facing the sofa across a pale rug, where the blue can lead the room.

Homrest Vintage Corduroy Accent Chair

Wide-wale corduroy in midnight blue covers one long cushion that rolls over at the top and at the front edge, so the whole seat looks like a wave about to break. A thin black steel frame holds it at each side, capped with short arms of solid oak.

The chair sits low and broad, built for sinking into with your legs tucked up. It has a 1970s ease about it, and it belongs with a shag rug, a record player, and a big paper lantern. The top cushion lifts off for cleaning.

KINWELL Boucle Swivel Barrel Chair

A barrel chair wraps its back and arms into one continuous curve, and the KINWELL draws that curve generously. The seat is deep and wide, with room to sit cross-legged or to curl up sideways, and cream boucle covers all of it down to the floor.

Hidden underneath is a base that lets the chair turn right round. Place a pair of them opposite a sofa and the seating becomes sociable in every direction. It comes ready built, so there is nothing to put together.

Welax Cloud Nest Boucle Accent Chair

Deep green boucle and a low, armless seat make the Cloud Nest look like a mossy boulder set on two wooden runners. The legs are the detail to notice. Each is a single bent piece of dark wood that slopes back under the seat and tilts the whole chair into a gentle recline.

Two cushions come with it, a long bolster and a smaller pillow for the lower back, both in the same green. With no arms in the way you can sit sideways or cross-legged, and these proportions make it a natural choice for a bedroom or a reading nook.

HOMCOM Mid-Century Modern Accent Chair

Danish designers of the 1950s liked to show how a chair was put together, and the HOMCOM follows them. Its frame is pale wood, plainly jointed, with flat paddle arms and legs that splay a little, and the gray cushions simply sit inside it.

Buttons and piped edges give the upholstery a tailored finish. It is a modest, upright, well-mannered chair, the sort that works in a study, beside a bed, or as the second seat in a small living room, where its open sides keep the space from feeling filled.

Homrest Floral Wingback Accent Chair

Pattern is the point here. Rust, ochre, and brown leaves scatter across a cream ground and cover every surface of the chair, wings, rolled arms, and seat alike. The shape underneath is thoroughly traditional, a small wing chair on turned wooden legs of the kind found beside English fireplaces.

One patterned chair can wake up a room of plain sofas and solid curtains. Pick out the rust in a cushion elsewhere and the print looks as if it was always part of the plan. It is a cheerful seat for a sunroom, a bedroom, or the fireside.

Magipa Mid-Century Faux Leather Accent Chair

Black upholstery and red-brown wood are an old and handsome pairing, and the Magipa uses them plainly. The arms sweep down from the back in one long curve, and the legs splay outward, so from the side the chair has the lean look of something drawn in a single line. The seat and back are flat pads of smooth black faux leather. It suits a home office or a den, across from a desk or under a floor lamp, and it would look good in pairs.

Swivel Barrel Club Chair With Nailhead Trim

Two rows of nailheads trace every edge of this club chair, around the top of the curved back, down the front of the arms, and along the base. They are a detail borrowed from old leather library chairs, used here on pale wheat linen, where they look like fine stitching. The shape is a deep tub with a loose seat cushion, and it turns on a hidden swivel. Linen in a color this quiet goes with nearly everything, so the chair can move from a living room to a bedroom when the house changes.

Homrest Throne High-Back Velvet Accent Chair

Some chairs are for sitting in and some are for making an entrance. The Homrest is the second kind. Its back rises tall and narrow, curls over at the top like a scroll, and is buttoned all the way down in royal blue velvet, with nailheads along the edges and a round tufted seat at its foot.

Lift the seat cushion and there is a compartment beneath, handy for a throw or the magazines of the week. It is a showpiece for a dressing room, a hallway, or the corner of a bedroom, and children will claim it as a throne at once.

Welax Barrel Accent Chair

Fold the back down and this chair becomes a round ottoman. Fold it up and it is a small tub chair again, with a padded band curving behind you. The change takes a moment, and it gives one piece of furniture two lives, a seat at the dressing table in the morning and a footstool by the sofa at night.

The colors are split, with a drum base in channeled olive green and a seat and back in oatmeal. It also swivels. In a studio apartment, where every piece has to justify its floor, it is an easy one to say yes to.

HOMCOM Wingback Accent Chair With Round Armrests

Dark green is a classic color for a wing chair, the shade of club rooms and billiard tables, and it gives this one an air of long standing. The back is deeply buttoned, the arms roll outward in fat scrolls, and the legs are turned and painted black.

High sides are what make a wing chair so good to read in. They close you in a little and give your head a place to lean when the chapter runs long. Stand it by a window with a small table and a lamp, and it will be the seat everyone heads for.

Homrest Armless Velvet Accent Chair

The slipper chair began in the bedroom, low and armless so that a lady could sit to put on her shoes, and it has never gone out of use. Homrest’s version has a tall back that rolls over at the top and flows down into the seat in one S-shaped line, tufted with buttons and covered in cream velvet. Without arms it takes up little width, so it fits in narrow places, at the end of a bed, beside a dresser, or in a pair flanking a fireplace. Black legs sharpen the pale upholstery.

Before You Choose a Chair

Seat height is worth a look before you order. A chair that will face a sofa is easier to talk from when the two seats are close in height, so compare the figures in the details. Leave space behind a swivel chair for the back to turn, and a clear path in front of any seat. On a living room rug, set at least the front legs on the pile so the chair looks anchored to the group.