A weathered red-orange garden chair leaning against a tree in a meadow of buttercups

A Small Frivolity

How I LOVE Orange Chairs!

You turn a corner — a side street, a friend's back garden, the wrong door at a hotel — and there it is. An orange chair. Not beige, not taupe, not the safe grey of a furniture showroom. Orange.

Sometimes they are — Full On — Orange, and sometimes a weathered softer hue. But still — orange. And sometimes — not a chair — but an entire sofa, or a garden room.

Ornate baroque orange armchair on a lawn — A baroque throne, marooned in a field

Bright orange bar stool at a light wood desk

The chair you did not plan for

Most rooms are designed to be forgotten. An orange chair refuses. It is loud in the best possible sense — the sense of a friend laughing across a quiet café. You did not order it. You did not budget for it. It arrived anyway, and now the whole room has to reckon with it.

Orange metal café chairs around a rustic patio table

Rows of orange auditorium chairs in a historic library

A red-orange garden chair holding a tin kettle spilling with sedum — The chair that became a garden stage

Frivolity as a small act of courage

There is a version of taste that says: keep everything quiet, keep everything matched, keep nothing that a stranger would raise an eyebrow at. And then there is the orange chair — dragged in from a flea market, inherited from an aunt, ordered on a Tuesday night for reasons you cannot fully explain. It says: I live here. I am allowed to be delighted.

Vivid mustard-orange sectional sofa with pillows — One loud sofa, and the room forgives it

Terracotta-orange thatched garden room framed by palms

Full on, or barely there

Some are lit up like a traffic cone — a baroque throne of orange plastic marooned in a field, a mustard-yellow sofa spread across a gallery floor, a whole thatched garden room glowing terracotta between two palms. Others have softened into something quieter: the wicker chair at the tide line, its weave gone the color of the sunset behind it; the tufted velvet armchair holding down a dark corner; the little garden chair pressed into service as a plant stand.

Both count. The whole point is that the color showed up.

Weathered wicker chair at the water's edge at sunset

Tufted golden-orange velvet armchair in a dim corner

Where they turn up

On a dock at the edge of a still lake. On the ice of a half-frozen stream. In a scrap yard, between two tired folding chairs, glowing like a small fire. At the breakfast bar of a stranger's kitchen where you were only meant to stop for coffee. Orange chairs are almost always found, never quite bought.

Two orange Adirondack chairs on a dock reflected in still water

Weathered wood-and-iron garden chair against an ivy-covered stone wall

A bright orange folding chair between two muted chairs in a junkyard

Orange velvet armchair in a brick-walled room with an abstract painting

Mustard-orange molded shell chair in a dim room

What to do when you find one

Sit in it. Take the picture. Move it three feet to the left and see what the room does. Say yes to it before the sensible part of you catches up. That is, more or less, the whole of BOHO — a life arranged around the small, unreasonable objects that make your heart sing.

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