Every good designer knows how to successfully mix high and low price points to create a beautiful home. Just how a nice pair of shoes can pull together your entire outfit, investing in a few furniture pieces inside your home will elevate everything else. For today’s Good to Know post, Marianne is taking you inside her own home to share which furniture pieces she invested in and where she decided to save.

If you read our blog post last week, you know we are big proponents of custom furniture (and if you didn’t, you can read it here). Custom furniture isn’t always the most expensive option but it’s not the most affordable one either. When we design custom pieces, we often partner them with more affordable surrounding furniture or accessories - this is what we like to call the art of the mix. For my breakfast nook, I really wanted a stylish and comfortable banquette. I decided to design a custom one with a leather bench cushion and a linen pinstripe backrest. Because of this, I needed a specific size table for the nook so we decided to design a custom piece there too. Due to the higher price points on the custom pieces, I opted to save on these dining chairs that go along the other side of the table. I ended up getting these more affordable bar stools to save a little as well. Since I still have young kids, I anticipate these pieces will likely need to be replaced one day. We spend so much time in our kitchen and these chairs and stools see a fair amount of wear and tear, which was one of the reasons I chose to not fully invest in these two pieces just yet.

In my living room, I ended up investing in my coffee table. Again, like we mentioned last week, coffee tables are furniture items we like to custom design so they fit the space exactly how we envision. We strive to create timeless and inheritable furniture designs - high-quality pieces that stand the test of time. We find that case goods (coffee tables, consoles, dining tables, etc.) are pieces that, when invested in, are more likely to hold up over time and will hopefully be passed down through generations.

Another way I mixed high and low in my home was through the artwork. I have inherited and invested in several original paintings and countered those with some very affordable art. For instance, the art above my fireplace by artist Colby Sanford was an investment but the artwork in my butler’s pantry was a piece I had printed on canvas at Costco (see both below). All the artwork in my dining room is original while much of the artwork in my kid’s rooms and bathrooms are either printable or affordable vintage pieces found on Etsy. Again, it’s all about the mix: investing in a few unique pieces of artwork and coupling them with great printed or vintage finds will make the more affordable art look higher-end.

If you need more ideas on ways to save, check out our guide to antique shopping and this post featuring our favorite accessible artwork. As always, you can shop our projects here where we include a great mix of high and low.