My coffee pot is a relic: a glass, stovetop percolator that’s at least half a century old that rattles as it brews; though clean on the inside, the glass has a brown stain on the bottom that I just can’t scrub off. My bed frame had been previously owned by my wife’s aunt. My Scrabble board is held together with a piece of tape across its back. But the percolator still makes excellent coffee. The bed frame holds up the bed despite gravity’s best efforts. And the Scrabble board still permits me to play QUETZAL on a triple word box, to the chagrin of my opponent. However, my wife doesn’t love these old, pre-owned, falling apart things, even though I do.

The idea that something beautiful can also be functional and vice versa is nothing new under the sun; it is, after all, the central question at the heart of what design is. As my wife and I furnish our new family room and bedroom, I’m open to the idea of bringing some new things into our life. But when do we stick with those ugly, functioning and beloved items in our lives, and when do we upgrade to something shiny and new? 

Does coffee taste better if the vessel is pretty? 

I’ve never been much of a car guy, but I certainly can’t help but stare at that beautiful classic forever parked in my neighbor’s driveway. Though he rarely drives it, he certainly enjoys that it sits on his asphalt trophy shelf leading up to his garage. The way he feels about cars is how I feel about coffee. And for a long time I’ve batted around the idea of allowing an espresso machine to take the place of my stovetop percolator and espresso maker, and permanently encroach upon counter space that I’ve strived to keep bare.

Like my percolator, my stovetop Bialetti espresso maker had seen better days. But it still made a decent espresso and I couldn’t see why it needed replacing. A brief foray into a pod-based system a decade ago was a failure—the machine was an eyesore and I quickly had buyer’s remorse. And when I discovered that all the pods that came with the machine were expired, I got into my car and returned the product. Since then, I’ve been reluctant to commit to another machine. But with a newly revamped home, the time felt right to get a machine that was as beautiful as it was functional—like that classic car in my neighbor’s driveway, though one that could also produce coffees that would drive me through the day.

I decided on the Breville Barista Touch Impress. Blue and brass, it matched my new bar area, it looked beautiful on the countertop, and its clean, classic design demanded only the best fuel—I’m currently sipping freshly roasted beans from Indonesia with a rich chocolaty finish. It was something that I enjoyed looking at each morning, and something that my wife didn’t mind guests encountering in our kitchen, as compared to that old percolator that she always felt the need to explain that sat on the range like some ancient artifact.

“The more public places [of a house], aesthetics matter more because aesthetics is a way to communicate about yourself,” said Sally Augustin, a design and environmental psychologist and the principal at Design with Science.

While I refused to retire my old percolator, adding the lovely Barista Touch into my life has only improved my coffee drinking and, I guess, what I’m saying about myself. Like my neighbor, who enjoys presenting as a car snob, I enjoy the new coffee snob title, now that I’m operating coffee making’s equivalent of a Ferrari. The machine affects more than just my countertop. I’m visiting roasteries for the first time to improve my brews and nerding out over grind size and tamping techniques. I wasn’t having that sort of fun with my battered Bialetti. And unlike my neighbor’s car, design and function are working in equal measure.

What about games? 

Like my coffee makers, I considered other items in my house that get a lot of use, like board games.

“How about getting a beautiful chess set,” my wife said. While I love chess, she couldn’t even name more than two pieces on the board. And my daughters refuse to play chess with me. Since most of my screen time is spent battling it out in 10-minute games on Chess.com, I wondered if a posh chess set was worth the investment.

We had a bookshelf displaying all of our books and photographs of our travels, featuring surfboards leaning against concrete walls and motorcycles parked along steeped rice paddies. Did we really need to display my love for board games? Did I need some fancy chess set always on display, forever occupying a table like some rook refusing to leave the back row, collecting dust? Did I need a designer Scrabble board when my duct-taped board did the trick whenever my other neighbor—if you’re wondering, he drives an SUV—agreed to one of our infrequent games? Ultimately, I decided that virtual chess and old Scrabble trumped fancy game boards, as it all works the same. And I’d rather them tucked away until they were needed rather than promoting my love for games and my family’s lack of interest in the very same thing. In the end, we decided that less-cluttered common rooms were preferable.

And the bedroom?

According to Augustin, the bedroom was a place where we could sacrifice on design, as it was a more private space. After all, in bedrooms and bathrooms, function mattered more. I reasoned, why should we replace our bed frame or nightstands—the only items in our room—if they did the trick?

But my wife disagreed with Augustin and me. For her, design and aesthetics in the bedroom was equally important because the way something looks promotes the sense of peace, calm, and order that she wants in a space, especially the bedroom. As we looked around for a bed frame, I had again tried to invoke Augustin’s message. We’d be better suited with one that had drawers, I explained to my wife, especially since I had the habit of piling not-clean-not-dirty clothes on the floor. But she couldn’t abide by that. 

She liked Benchmade Modern’s Hayes platform bed, as it was upholstered in a lovely beige linen, and had a simple, but elegant design. I deferred to her tastes and quickly realized that our new bed frame’s design had hidden benefits. For one, with the old bed frame, which was lofted a foot over the floor, I used to see all the dust that collected there even a day or two after cleaning. But this bed frame hid that stress and was elevated enough to clean with one swipe of a duster. And it delivered the peace and calm my wife desired.

The last pieces of furniture that we had to agree over were nightstands. My wife stood staunchly in the design camp, while I was focused more on function. She made her case for a beautiful wooden end table that would hold nothing more than an alarm clock and phone; I wanted one with an abundance of drawers that I could fill with clothing and load up with books. When looking on Thuma’s website, we wondered why we even had to agree on nightstands; unlike a bed or espresso machine, these were two separate things that told two separate stories about its nearest sleeper. There was something intriguing about mismatched end tables.

I went with Thuma’s Nest nightstand, with two elongated drawers, allowing me to store things, while the Classic nightstand matched my wife’s preference for smart, clean, and cute. We placed our disagreeing walnut nightstands on opposite sides of the new bed we shared. The room was clean, empty, designed to each of our individual preferences, and full of the functionality that we each, separately, desired.

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