Shaker Style Furniture, Sets and Modern Styling Tips
Shaker furniture is renowned for its enduring simplicity, functional design, and meticulous craftsmanship. While it's considered a traditional style, its clean lines and understated nature allow it to integrate with a broad range of other decor themes. As your tastes morph with time and design trends come and go, Shaker style furniture can stay a steadfast fixture in your home, making it a worthwhile investment.
Countryside Amish Furniture offers hundreds of Shaker designs, all customizable to perfectly align with your other furniture. Whether you choose a Shaker-inspired kitchen chair, an armoire with classic features, or a bedframe modernized with a contemporary stain, each piece reflects the quality and craftsmanship central to the Shaker tradition.
Examples of Shaker Furniture Sets
Shaker Dining Room Tables
Shaker dining tables often sport tapered legs (rather than pedestal or trestle designs). The top will be at least 1” thick and often framed by an angled or rounded edge profile. In the spirit of Shaker furniture’s emphasis on practical function, almost all of the tables can include expansion leaves. We welcome you to browse the dozens of Shaker Dining Tables that can be built by our Amish furniture makers to your precise specifications.
Examples of Shaker dining room tables
Shaker Kitchen Chairs
Shaker-inspired chairs will exhibit much of the same classic furniture characteristics as Shaker tables, including taped and/or turned legs. The slats are evenly spaced, avoiding ornamentation like exposed joinery, ebony inlays, or crisscross backs. While Countryside Amish Furniture offers the flexibility to stain the chair in any color you choose, traditional Shaker design favors a uniform, natural finish.
Examples of Shaker dining chairs
Shaker Bed Frames
Shaker bed designs are defined by smooth lines and modest silhouettes, often framed by turned posts and feet. However, the simplicity of the design doesn’t have to equal boring, as proven by the striking examples below. In fact, the eye-catching shape can lead to an overall modern appearance.
Examples of Shaker bed frames
Shaker Dressers
The most iconic furniture characteristic of Shaker-style dressers is its use of round, small knobs made of wood; comparatively, most other decor themes favor metal pulls. Additional hallmark traits include turned, tapered feet that enhance the dresser's streamlined, minimalist aesthetic. Above all else, Shaker dressers also embrace a "function follows form" design, prioritizing practicality without sacrificing beauty.
Examples of Shaker dressers
Shaker Desks and Office Furniture
Shaker office furniture and desks lack the bells and whistles of many modern workstations; no shiny metal handles, decorative glass panes, LED lighting, or complex organizational systems. While Countryside Amish Furniture can tailor any Shaker desk to incorporate such enhancements, our Shaker designs inherently place a premium on timeless simplicity. As with so many different types of Shaker furniture, telltale characteristics include tapered legs, petite wooden knobs, and consistent shaping throughout. View all of our Shaker-styled desks or view the example pieces below.
Examples of Shaker office furniture
Shaker Storage Furniture
Ideally, storage pieces will ultimately be the most adaptable of all of your furniture. After all, as your organizational needs change, the bookcase or set of drawers may move from one room to the next. For this reason, the simplicity and malleability of Shaker styling may make it ideal for your storage furniture. Complementary without ever being the star, these pieces can add much-needed utility to almost any corner.
Examples of Shaker Storage Furniture
Helpful Insights Into Shaker Style Furniture
Common Wood & Stain Choices for Amish-Made Mission Furniture
To preserve the foundational characteristics of Shaker furniture, it should be crafted from North American timber. The most commonly used wood species for Shaker designs include red and white oak, cherry, and brown maple. Equally important as the choice of wood is the stain selection—if you wish to maintain the classic Shaker look, opt for a natural finish. For a more modern twist, Countryside Amish Furniture offers the option of deeper, more saturated stains, or even the combination of multiple hues for a unique touch.
Examples of Shaker Furniture Stained for a Modern Look
Shaker Furniture vs. Mission Furniture
While Shaker and Mission furniture share many characteristics, the two terms should not be used interchangeably.
Shaker furniture features tapered legs and rounded edges, while Mission furniture is defined by straight angles and sturdy slats. What’s more, Shaker pieces often use light woods like cherry or maple and incorporate wooden knobs, whereas Mission furniture leans toward darker stains and black or metal hardware. While both styles value simplicity, Shaker furniture embodies minimalism, and Mission furniture offers a more robust and formal appearance.
What’s the Origins of Shaker Furniture?
To fully appreciate the underpinning principles of Shaker furniture, it’s helpful to familiarize itself with its history. Shaker culture’s ties to this continent are older than America itself, as the first group landed in 1774. Determined to emanate Christ’s modest lifestyle, they shunned excess, instead prioritizing simplicity, quality, and usefulness. What’s more, the Shakers strove to be entirely self-sufficient, meaning that they cultivated the craftsmanship to grow and build all they would need.
The result? Exquisitely constructed Shaker furniture made entirely from solid wood that is beautiful in its thoughtful proportions, practicality, and use of high-end materials.
Order Your Shaker From Countryside Amish Furniture
Countryside Amish Furniture upholds the philosophy that defines Shaker furniture, both in the aesthetic of the designs and how the pieces are made. Authentic Amish workers diligently craft each piece from North American hardwood using traditional joinery. While the final piece may be newly built precisely to fit your home’s decor, it will be strongly reminiscent of yesteryear’s traditions.