We built the Help me Pick Textiles Styling Tool for the person who's standing in their living room at 9pm trying to decide whether a cushion will work and shouldn't have to guess. The question we kept hearing was the same one: "I like the cushion but I don't know if it'll work with what I've already got." Fair question. You're looking at a stylised product photo on a white background and trying to imagine it on your sofa, next to your rug, in your light. It's a hard ask. Most stores answer it with a "shop the look" page — here's a sofa, here are the cushions that go with it, buy all four. That only works if you're starting from scratch, which most people aren't. The Help me Pick Textiles Styling Tool starts from what you've got. You show it your room — an uploaded photo — and it reads the tones, textures and materials already in your space. Then it recommends cushions, throws and linen that would sit well alongside them. Not matching. Mixing. The difference matters. Matching means everything comes from the same palette, the same moment, the same decision. It's how display homes work. Mixing means the pieces arrive at different times, from different places, and still read as one room because the tonal range holds together. That's how real homes work — and it's what the tool is designed to support. → Try the Styling Tool now What it actually does: it analyses the dominant tones and material character in your photo and groups them into a style profile — contrast, tonal or balanced. Contrast rooms have strong light-dark interplay. Tonal rooms sit in a narrow colour range. Balanced rooms split the difference. Your profile determines which pieces get recommended, and the recommendations are drawn from our live catalogue — every cushion, throw, and linen piece we carry, tagged to the style system. You don't need to know your profile to use it. You upload. It reads. It recommends. If you disagree with the results, that's fine — your eye is the final call, not the algorithm. The tool is a starting point, not a verdict. Why we built it as a tool rather than a blog post or a styling guide: because the answer is different for every room. A guide can tell you "pair linen with linen" or "add texture contrast." It can't look at your specific sofa, your specific rug, your specific light, and tell you which exact cushion would work. The Styling Tool can — or at least, it gets close enough that you're deciding between two options instead of forty. It's one of the things that makes Coastalis different from other homewares sites. Less coordinated. More collected. → Try it now  

There's a moment after everyone sits down when I look at the table and know whether it's working or not. A dining table that looks ready to use is different from a dining table that's been set. One invites you to sit down. The other makes you feel like you're about to mess something up. The difference is usually three things: what's in the middle, what the light is doing, and whether the table looks like it exists between meals — not just during them. Starting in the middle. You don't need a centrepiece. You need something that holds the centre of the table without blocking the person across from you. A low bowl — ceramic, stoneware, something with weight — with dried native stems or a couple of cut branches from the garden does the job. It doesn't need to be flowers. It doesn't need to be elaborate. It needs to be low enough that you can see over it and interesting enough that it earns its place on the table when nobody's eating. If your table is reclaimed elm or has a strong natural grain, the centrepiece should be simple. The table is already doing the visual work. A single ceramic bowl in a neutral tone — sand, raw clay, stone — sits quietly and lets the timber carry the room. → Shop ceramics and vessels Then the candlestands. This is where our range earns its spot. Hand-forged iron with visible hammer marks — they look like they've always been on the table, not like they arrived yesterday. Set two or three at different heights, off-centre. Not symmetrical. Slightly grouped, the way you'd place things without thinking about it. The irregularity is the whole point — it's what makes a table feel collected rather than arranged. → Shop the range Linen on the table — and by this I mean napkins, not a tablecloth. A tablecloth on a timber dining table is like putting a case on a phone you chose for the colour. The table is the surface. Let it show. Linen napkins in a tonal colour — flax, natural, oatmeal — folded once and set beside the plate. Nothing fancy. The napkin is there to be used, not admired. The Vintage Brass Rasa Lassi Cups are the kind of thing people pick up and turn over in their hands. Hand-engraved, each one slightly different. They work as water tumblers, small vessels for herbs, or just objects that sit on the table and give people something to touch. That's an underrated quality in tableware — the invitation to pick something up. Glassware rounds it out. The hammered glass tumblers in smoke catch the light differently at every angle. They're not matching sets in the traditional sense — the hand-finishing means each one varies slightly. A table set with four of them looks put together without looking purchased as a set. A well-set table tells a story about the meals that have happened on it. The bowl that came from a trip. The candlestands that darken with use. The glasses with the small imperfections that tell you a person made them. Less matching. More memory. → Browse all collections

People spend months choosing a sofa. They measure, they sample fabrics, they agonise over whether it's too big for the room or too small for the family. And then they forget to put anything next to it. A room with a sofa and nothing else to sit in doesn't feel finished. It feels like a waiting room. The thing that changes it — the thing that gives a room a second purpose, a reading corner, a place to sit that isn't in front of the TV — is an occasional chair. I've had the Astoria in both colourways for long enough now to have an opinion. The Chocolate is deeper and warmer — it reads well in a room with timber floors and natural linen. It's the version that disappears slightly into the room, which is what you want if the chair is doing the job of a reading corner rather than a focal point. The Dusk is lighter, cooler, more visible. It announces itself more, which makes it a better pick for a room that needs something to anchor one side — next to a window, beside a bookshelf, in a corner that currently has nothing. Both swivel. This matters more than it sounds. A swivel chair lets you face the room, face the window, or turn toward a conversation without committing to one direction. Fixed chairs force a choice. Swivel chairs let the room decide. The frame is solid timber and the upholstery has the kind of irregular weave you only get from a fabric that wasn't engineered for the camera. It will soften in the seat first, then the arms. The chair earns its corner the longer it's in the room. Where to put it: next to a window is almost always right. Natural light plus a chair is a reading corner. Add a floor lamp or a table lamp on a small side table and you've given someone a reason to sit there. You don't need much — the chair, the light, and maybe a throw over the arm. That's a room within a room. The other spot people underestimate is the bedroom. A chair in the corner of a bedroom — with a linen throw draped over it and a pair of shoes underneath — does more for the lived-in feel of the space than any amount of cushion arranging on the bed. It's the piece that says someone actually uses this room, not just sleeps in it. → Shop the Astoria Chair The instinct with occasional chairs is to go safe — beige, grey, something that "goes with everything." But a room full of safe choices is a room with no personality. Pick the colour that makes you pause. That's usually the right one. A room with the sofa you measured for and an occasional chair you chose because you paused on it. Less staged. More lived-in. → Browse all seating