Lorimer justified his widening experiments in furniture design on the grounds that he was choosing the most convenient shape and then refining it. Morris would have said, he noted, that 'we should get rid of the idea that we can make a thing French by giving it a twist one way or English by giving it a twist another way'. Nevertheless, Lorimer did have his own prejudices. In 1896 he went over with Walter Tapper from Bodley's office to see Bodley's partner, Thomas Garner. They took their bicycles to Bicester by train and bicycled over the last six or seven miles to Fritwell. 'I don't know really whether I was delighted as I expected or not. The house itself is perfectly charming outside and in, but the garden of the place is without much charm and in looking through the furniture, I didn't see anything, you know what I mean, about which I said to myself "Well its a d----d mistake Garner having that because it simply ought to belong to me"'. They lunched pleasantly and afterwards sat in the garden under a cherry tree but he found the Garners, 'so desperately English and narrow, something awful. Of course nothing but English furniture in the house and all belonging to the date before inlay and veneer was dreamed of, though the things are beautiful examples of their own rather played out kind.'

The Dutch museums which he had visited on his frequent holidays there had left a marked influence on his furniture design and by 1900 he had designed a bench for his mother's home in Bruntsfield Crescent, Pl. 126. He told Dods of its 'legs and stretchers largely cribbed from some I saw in the Riks Museum at Amsterdam last year. The point about the things is the stretchers and the repeat'. He was delighted with their curvilinear form; 'You can imagine that these things swung about in the most beautiful spokeshave manner are A.1.'. He had also a particular liking for French furniture. He had bought several Norman oak pieces on other tours, including a wardrobe which was later built in to a recess in the hall at his house in Melville Street. Another wardrobe chosen by his brother was adapted for the north wall of the dining room at Kellie and their mutual friend D. Y. Cameron had an escritoire in this style which he gave to an Edinburgh Gallery. Lorimer was also very keen on Louis Quinze veneered furniture. He had begun to buy such pieces by 1896 when he told Dods of a shop which he had found with 'a lot of things in my fine severe style. Still think that Louis XV veneered furniture when you can get it severe enough (but only then) and looking as if it were made for use is the finest stuff that has ever been done.' Pl. 129. Queen Anne was yet another style he used at times. Hussey says he discovered it while in Bodley's office, and it was at that time that his links were at their closest with Norman Shaw who had much to do with its revival. He told Dods of a further project for 'a real "Queen Anne" tea table with a "well" for keeping the teacups etc. and so on I'll go, and gradually one will get a good many "worthy" possessions, of course its expensive but I don't think more so than buying the old stuff.'