Traditional
Rich with history and forever in style, the traditional look celebrates the best in design — making your home feel warm, inviting and friendly.
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STYLE OVERVIEW
Transitional Interior Design
Decisions, decisions. Having a hard time choosing between the warm nostalgia of classic antiques and the clean, structural lines of a contemporary home? You don’t have to pick just one.Transitional interior design offers the perfect middle ground. Acting as a seamless marriage between rich traditional details and sleek contemporary aesthetics, the transitional style delivers a sophisticated look while maintaining a comfortable, inviting feel.
Bold, structural furnishings and dynamic accents drive this look, helping solidify it as a premier choice for anyone who wants a home that feels both current and enduring.
Transitional Interior Design
What Is Transitional Style?
Transitional style blends classic warmth with modern clarity. Instead of committing entirely to heavy wood carvings or stark minimalist frames, it selects the most livable elements from both worlds.
Core principles of a transitional home design include:
- Balanced Silhouettes: Classic furniture forms paired with streamlined upholstery and understated profiles.
- Neutral Interior Design Base: A serene foundation built on warm cream, taupe, soft gray, and crisp white to let structural shapes shine.
- Textural Depth: Layered fabrics like linen, wool, velvet, and natural wood grain compensate for a restrained color palette.
- Updated Hardware: Classic millwork paired with clean, geometric fixtures in brushed nickel, matte black, or satin brass.
Transitional Kitchens and Bathrooms:
Kitchens and bathrooms showcase transitional design style exceptionally well. These high-use spaces rely on classic craftsmanship paired with high-performance modern fixtures.
- Transitional Kitchen Design: A transitional kitchen creates a balanced, welcoming hub by pairing clean Shaker-style cabinet doors with slab quartz or subtle zellige tile backsplashes. Pull-down faucets with modest flourish profiles team up with minimalist polished nickel or oil-rubbed bronze hardware to bring clean texture and quiet sophistication to the space without heavy patterning.
- Transitional Bathroom Design: In the bathroom, transitional style focuses on quiet luxury and uncluttered utility through freestanding furniture-style vanities paired with sleek, modern storage. Widespread cross-handle faucets, geometric glass sconces, and flat-bottom freestanding soaking tubs bridge vintage character with clean modern lines to create an elegant, functional focal point.
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Explore Other Styles
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Modern Farmhouse
A balanced blend of rustic charm and refined character, the modern farmhouse look makes any home feel comfortable, cozy and classic.
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Mid-Century Modern
60’s chic meets modern minimalism with this retro style. Learn more about mid-century modern design & how to incorporate it into your home.
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Industrial
Industrial design brings vintage to the modern day, with wood, concrete, exposed bricks & metal as the defining characteristics of this minimalist style.
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Contemporary
Borrowing elements from modern, traditional and art deco movements, the contemporary look is versatile and always in style.
ExploreNot quite your style? Let’s try some other options!
Showroom Locations
Visit a Showroom
Creating balanced transitional living spaces comes down to thoughtful material layering and enduring fixture choices. Visit a local showroom to explore finishes, touch real stone samples, and discover the right plumbing and hardware pieces for your home.
Take the Style Finder Quiz | Shop Online at Coburns.com | Find Your Nearest Coburn’s Location
2026 Fall Lookbook
Layer Into Fall
This fall, it’s all about the layers. Explore a curated mix of finishes, textures and details designed to help you create spaces that feel collected, comfortable and completely your own.
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Updating to a Transitional Look: Showers, Tubs, Sinks, and Lighting
Many homeowners arrive at transitional style by updating a traditional house rather than starting from scratch. The architecture stays, and the change comes from what gets added: a better shower, a softer soaking tub, sinks in natural materials, and lighting that bridges classic and current. This section covers those pieces and the order that tends to work best.
Where to Start When Updating
Keep the elements that give the house its character: crown molding, wood floors, door and window casings, and any built-ins in good condition. Then update in layers. Lighting usually comes first, since a new chandelier or set of pendants shifts a room immediately. Plumbing fixtures follow, ideally when a bathroom or kitchen is already being opened up. Furniture and accessories come last, once the fixed pieces have set the tone. Working in this order keeps the house from looking half-finished between stages. Set a budget for each layer before starting, so lighting doesn’t absorb money meant for the bathroom or kitchen.
Showers With Thermostatic Control
A thermostatic shower valve holds the water at the temperature you set, even when someone runs a tap or flushes elsewhere in the house. Most models separate temperature from volume, so you can turn the flow up or down without changing the heat. Many thermostatic systems can also run more than one outlet, such as a rainhead and a handshower, from a single control. That control suits a transitional bathroom, where comfort matters as much as looks. Pair the valve with a round or softly squared showerhead and a handshower on a slide bar, all in one finish. Moen, featured below, offers shower valves and trim in profiles that sit between classic and modern.
Air Tubs for a Quieter Soak
An air tub pushes warm air through many small openings around the base of the tub, creating a soft, full-body massage. A whirlpool, by contrast, circulates bath water through larger jets. Compared with a whirlpool, an air tub tends to be quieter, and many purge their air lines after each use, so water doesn’t sit in the plumbing. BainUltra, also featured below, specializes in air tubs, available in freestanding and built-in designs whose simple shapes fit a transitional bath. Look for a contoured backrest and a length that lets you recline fully, since comfort is easiest to judge by sitting in the tub in person.
Copper and Natural-Material Sinks
A neutral transitional room needs warmth somewhere, and a sink is an effective place to add it. A copper sink brings a living finish that darkens and develops character with use, and a hammered copper vessel sink makes a strong statement in a powder room. Native Trails, featured below, makes handcrafted copper sinks along with NativeStone concrete sinks and vanities that add texture without heavy ornament. If you prefer a steadier color, ask whether a sealed finish is available. In a kitchen, a copper farmhouse or undermount sink pairs well with cream or soft gray cabinetry.
Transitional Lighting
Transitional lighting keeps classic shapes but strips back the detail. A transitional chandelier might have a drum shade, simplified curved arms, or a linear metal frame instead of crystal drops. Transitional pendant lights favor clear or seeded glass globes and softly rounded metal shades. The goal is a fixture that would look at home in an older house but doesn’t feel antique. In a kitchen, two or three pendants over an island balance a chandelier in the adjoining dining area.
The Transitional Living Room
A transitional living room is built around one light fixture and a simple furniture plan. Center seating on the fireplace or main window, anchor it with a neutral rug, and hang a chandelier or drum-shade flush mount over the seating area rather than relying on recessed lights alone. Table and floor lamps at different heights fill the corners. For transitional home decor, choose fewer, larger accessories, such as one substantial mirror, a pair of lamps, and a few books, so surfaces stay calm. Repeat the lighting’s metal finish in a frame or lamp base to tie the room together.
Planning Your Visit
Bring photos of the millwork and floors you plan to keep, plus any finish samples already chosen. If you are updating in stages, ask for a plan that shows how each phase connects. Take the Style Finder quiz
Got Questions?
We've Got Answers for Your Kitchen & Bath Project
At Coburn’s Showroom, with locations including Abita Springs, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Bayou Vista, and Beaumont. Book an appointment and a design consultant can pull Moen showers, BainUltra air tubs, and Native Trails sinks for your project.
Moen for faucets and shower systems, BainUltra for air tubs, Native Trails for copper and NativeStone concrete sinks, and Home Enhancements for [product category, pending confirmation] are the brands featured for this style.
Transitional keeps classic proportions and some traditional detail, softened with clean lines. Contemporary drops the traditional references almost entirely, favoring smooth surfaces, minimal ornament, and current materials.
They overlap, but modern traditional keeps more of its ornament, such as carved details and richer patterns. Transitional simplifies further, landing closer to the middle between traditional and contemporary.
For comfort and control, yes. Both protect against sudden temperature swings, but a thermostatic valve holds an exact temperature, lets you adjust volume separately, and can run several outlets. A pressure-balance valve is simpler and costs less.
An air bath suits most transitional bathrooms better. It gives a gentler, quieter massage, and many models purge their lines after use. Either type usually needs a dedicated GFCI-protected circuit, so plan it with your electrician early.
Wash it with mild soap and water and dry it with a soft cloth. Avoid abrasive pads and harsh chemicals, and don’t leave acidic foods sitting in the basin, since they can strip the patina in spots.
Choose a rug large enough for at least the front legs of every seating piece to rest on it. In most living rooms, that means an 8-by-10-foot rug or larger.
Use one wall color and one lead metal finish throughout the open area. Then define each zone with its own rug and light fixture, so the kitchen, dining, and living spaces read as connected but distinct.
Two- or three-panel doors with simple, flat panels sit between ornate traditional doors and slab modern ones. Pair them with lever handles in satin nickel or matte black.
A simple stone, plaster, or painted wood surround with a clean mantel shelf fits best. Skip heavy carving, but keep enough of a mantel to anchor the room.
Marble-look porcelain, white or soft gray subway tile, and small hexagon floor tile all suit the style. Keep patterns quiet and colors neutral so fixtures and finishes stand out.
A sofa with tailored lines, such as a track arm or a slim rolled arm, in a neutral, textured fabric. It should feel classic in shape but uncluttered, without heavy skirts or tufting.
Often, yes. Repainting in a soft neutral, swapping ornate hardware for simpler pulls, and updating the faucet and lighting can shift the kitchen without replacing the cabinet boxes.
Yes. Choose performance fabrics, washable matte or eggshell paint, and durable counters like quartz. The style’s neutral palette and simple shapes also hide everyday wear better than very formal or very minimal rooms.
