Occasional furniture

It's a chameleon arrangement. Sometimes you don't see it at all. Now you see it ...now you don't.

Seriously, it's more of an ornamental arrangement or for a room that doesn't get used so much.

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/occasional

Even with the definition, the phrase does not make sense to me. Does it have to do with how often the furniture is used? For instance, a person uses a bedroom set every night...............so that would not be occasional furniture. But then again, putting your clothes in the dresser, and using the bed when you go to sleep does satisfy the definition, of "when the occasion demands".

Or, does occasional furniture mean something that you don't use a lot, like the formal dining room that you only use when Aunt Martha comes to dinner? (You don't like her very much, so she is not invited often! )

I found the definition that Phoenix found. And it made no more sense to me than it did to her.

I poked around in various interior design glossaries. Found either nothing or nothing that made any sense.

One thing I did find related to "occasional tables." They are defined as any small table.

The pier, a world of world of inspiration for your home, says:

Other shops say, it is:

And I personally would think of it differently, alhough I know what Walter is saying is how the furniture folk define it, and since it's their business, I'm sure they're correct --- I would think of patio furniture that gets stored for winter, or, say, here in Albuquerque, not set out during the month or so of gusty winds in the Spring; tv tables...

not to nitpick ...but... that is seasonal furniture

As a former furniture sales-droid (and member of a furniture sales family) ... the best way to avoid any confusion looking in a furniture store is to refer to occasional furniture as differing from seasonal or patio furniture.

That reminds of the joke:

What is Irish and sits on your lawn in the summer?

Paddy O'Furniture

A milk crate seems to be a piece of occasional furniture.

Occasionally it can be used as a table, occasionally as a chair,
on it's side it could be a shelf, or turned up and used as a trash can.

On occasion, somebody else might even use it to carry milk.

I get the impression that it is supplementary type furniture, not the sort of thing you would build a whole room around but which is used to complete the set once the major pieces are in place, such as a small chair or table.

Since these pieces are not the focal points of the room, they often see life in different rooms from where they started. So a small table might start off in a living room, make it's way to the bedroom when the living room is redone, and end up in a den for a few years because it happened to fit a need there.

By contrast, something like a large white sofa is made for a living room, and usually ends up thrown out when the living room is redone because it really wouldn't fit anywhere else, unless your house has a lot of very large rooms.