15 Unusual and Unique Furniture Designs For Your Inspiration

“I love building spaces: architecture, furniture, all of it, probably more than fashion. The development procedure is more tactile. It’s about space and form and it’s something you can share with other people.” – Donna Karan

Design really is where art meets utility. As a designer, your job is to make something that is useful and pretty to look at in the same time, and people come to you asking for uniqueness. They want something that is new and never before seen, but works like everything else, so people will be familiar with it.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in furniture design. Any way you look at it, a chair is a surface you sit on, a bed is a surface you lay down on, and so on. Furniture is an excellent example of how different designs are used to achieve the same goal.

The reason why different designs are used is because furniture serves a double purpose. It is both useful and decorative. Making a house a home means making the house a place you like spending time in, and furniture is an integral part of building a pleasant ambiance. To help you with your design inspiration, we’re going to show you a list of unique furniture designs that should help get those creative juices flowing and get you started on creating some great designs of your own.

1. Rock on/ Rock off: Exquisite Mood Rocking Bed from Shiner International

There is nothing quite as relaxing as taking a nap out in the open air, but hammocks, although pleasant in short bursts, aren’t really all that comfortable for catching a few winks of sleep, and other alternatives such as a mattress or a plain bed sheet put you a bit too close to the ground where the bugs are.

This bed, designed by Joe Manus, is a fantastically decadent way of relaxing outdoors, and you can also use it indoors since it has rubber stoppers if you don’t always want it to rock you to sleep.

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2. M Shaped Couches

If you are a typography buff, than this couch should get you a bit giddy (and possibly a bit frustrated that you didn’t think of it first). The couch is designed by Claudio Scotto, and it is part of a whole set of furnishings based on letters, which you can see here. the airbed into the carpet, the designers eliminated the problem of having to move furniture around when guests stay over.

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3. Recycled Silk Chair, Ottoman & Stool

Brightly colored and eco-friendly, this is a great furniture set to have if you’re going for the hippy look. It’s made out of recycled silk, and the yarn is filled with sponge, so it won’t just be eco-friendly, but also comfortable. This is an excellent example of how to let the user customize his own experience from your design. This is a great idea for unique furniture designs.

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4. Contemporary Garden Sofa

Nothing says modern like minimalism, and you get that in full force with this retro sci-fi looking garden sofa. Inspired by pagoda roofs and UFOs, the people at Vondom designed this really classy piece of garden furniture, that comes in three different colors, namely white, black, and red. It also has interior lighting, making it perfect for creating ambiance.

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5. Hello & Goodbye

Coat hangers are quite overlooked in the world of design, and that is a crying shame. It can be the first thing you interact with when entering a house, or the last when leaving one. That’s why having one that stands out can really spruce up a place.

This gorgeous coat hanger designed by John Nouanesing is so simple it hurts. Instead of adding little hooks to the wooden frame, he just used the frame itself, by bending some of the wooden planks in such a way that clothes can be hung on them.

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6. Cocoon Napping Pods

Ever seen an Alien movie? Of course, you have! It’s one of the most important franchises in movie history. These “Napping Pods” are a homage to the franchise, and they are terrifically futuristic. Admit it, you’ve always wanted to try sleeping in a space pod.

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7. Cabbage Chair

Back to the world of environmentally friendly furniture. The Cabbage Chair is designed by Japanese designer Nendo, who used waste paper from the pleated fabric industry. This paper is usually discarded and harms the ecosystem, so such a product is useful on many levels. This is a great example of unique furniture designs.

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8. FAZ Modular Sofa

When buying furniture, you usually have to consider its size. The innovation here is that you can choose the size of the Modular Sofa and the purpose it will serve.

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9. HP Misto PC/Coffee Table

Touchscreen technology is quickly taking over the world, and it stands to reason that people will at least try to apply touchscreen functionality to furniture. We’re sure there are issues that still need hammering out (you wouldn’t put a cup of coffee on your PC tablet, would you?), but having a coffee table that doubles as a PC is a really solid and cool concept.

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10. Nappak

Airbeds seem a bit rudimentary. Just a plain inflatable mattress that you put on the floor to get you through the night. Earlier on our list we mentioned Pump It!, the airbed/carpet that saves space. This inflatable mattress, on the other hand, is in no way interested in saving space. What it’s trying to do is offer you maximum comfort.

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11. Sweeties

You probably wouldn’t see this set of stools and tables in a house, but they are a tremendous idea for a sweets shop. They look really cute (and, even more so, delicious), and can get customers coming just for the novelty look of the shop. This is a great example of unique furniture designs.

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12. Sofabed by Ole Jensen

Together with Claus Molgaard, Ole Jensen designed this sofabed “for the unexpected visitors who stays overnight”. It is an average sofa, essentially, only that it comes with six mattresses that can be laid out quickly and easily, not requiring inflation. Development has been done with the Technical University of Denmark and Innovation Randers so that the sofa will be environmentally viable.

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13. Socks

We’ll just go ahead and say it: This is the cutest set of bedside tables we have ever seen. Socks come in pairs, but sometimes these pairs get mismatched because they’re so similar (black socks, anyone?). These tables are just similar enough to be a pair, and just different enough to be two individual tables. They’re also eco-friendly, their “socks” being made from recycled plastic.

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14. Swinging Table

It’s a table with swinging chairs. Words cannot begin to describe what a cool idea this is. And 4 seats is not the only option. There’s a 6-seat version, a 12-seat version, and, best of all, there’s also a bar version. If you’re anything like us, you suddenly feel the urge to open a bar.

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15. LOMME

LOMME, which stands for “Light over matter mind evolution”, aims to revolutionize sleeping by making a bed that creates an ideal sleep environment, using light, sound, touch, and color. Like the Misto PC/Coffee Table, LOMME is as much a gadget as it is a piece of furniture.

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So, that raps up our list of unusual and unique furniture designs. We hope you enjoyed browsing it, and that it’ll help you get some design inspiration. Share any cool furniture designs you like in the comment section.

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