People who say size doesn’t matter are lying. However, what the statement often implies is that bigger is better, which isn’t the case when it comes to furniture, by any means. Size is important to get right, but an oversized item of furniture in the wrong place can throw an entire scheme off. Not least a sofa.
Recently, sofas seem to have been growing. So-flation is rampant. And yet, as Pallas Kalamotusis of Studio Krokalia recently told us in reference to L-shaped sofas (themselves often massive), “interior design is not only about beauty, it has to be about comfort also.” So, if sofas really are getting bigger, which it certainly feels is the case, how do you balance beauty and comfort?
When Stella Weatherall renovated her Notting Hill townhouse, she designed a deep bespoke sofa for her sitting room (above). “The depth of my sofa is 130cm,” Stella explains. “The maker asked, ‘Are you sure?’ I can understand his concern as it’s out of the ordinary, but I’m so glad I stood my ground and went for it. It takes up most of the small space but feels cosy and inviting rather than overcrowded. ”
The result was a statement piece of furniture into which one can literally sink – someone particularly short would have trouble touching the floor with their feet – and watch TV. It’s worth noting that this sofa is elevated by its stunning upholstery in Rose Uniacke’s “Spruce Cotton Velvet”, and when scattered with a dozen throw cushions in various bold prints and patterns, it acts as a visual centrepiece as much as a functional seat.
But why, exactly, did Stella want something so plush and huge? “I think I’ve always gravitated towards oversized when it comes to sofas for that ‘fall’-into feeling,” she says. “There’s nothing worse than watching TV sitting upright or shifting around to get comfortable when there’s not enough seat depth. The inspiration behind the depth of my sofa is from lounging on daybeds in Asia – those low-slung platforms layered with cushions that encourage you to stretch out and be almost horizontal.
“And yes—it always gets a reaction. People sit down and almost immediately say, ‘Wow, this is dangerous.’”
Like Pallas and Stella, Sarah Peake of Studio Peake champions a large sofa, and an old one, from Camerich, was an avowed favourite place to spend long evenings during the Covid-19 pandemic. “The corner seat is my absolute favourite spot,” she told House & Garden, “cocooned within the cushions and my feet up. I spent a lot of evenings on it in 2020.” As for scale, the significant size and weight of the sofa had the counterintuitive effect of enhancing the small living room of her ground-floor flat in a Victorian terrace. “It tricked the eye into thinking the room was larger than it was. And the low back helped give the space a feeling of height.” As with Stella Weatherall’s deep sofa, cushions were key in breaking up the neutral colour of the upholstery – in this case from Penny Morrison and the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.
Perhaps some context would be sensible, too. Sofas are getting bigger, but so is everything – and this has been the case for a while. Last year, the BBC reported on a study by the non-profit Transport and Environment which discovered that the average car had grown a centimetre wider every two years since the 1970s, essentially meaning your car today is likely half a metre greater in span than your grandmother’s was. Food is now served in far larger portions than it was half a century ago, and AP News reported last year that televisions were beginning to nudge the 100-inch mark as the cost to produce larger and larger screens has come down dramatically over the past decade. The enlarging trend isn’t restricted to furniture or sofas.
Nonetheless, as far back as 2012, the New York Times was declaring that furniture was getting bigger and bigger, and that “big furniture seems to have reached a critical mass of comical massiveness”. (Says one Texan in that article about his sofa: “This couch is a beast. In fact it is so big it’s almost like having a whole cow in your living room.”) And there is certainly a feeling that American tastes might be having an influence on our choices in the UK – naturally, in an expansive and still largely empty continent like North America, bigger houses have space for sprawling sofas.
Maybe it’s all just a question of comfort. If interior designers and their clients are favouring weighty Chesterfields over love seats, we can hardly blame them. “A sense of comfort” is among the most common phrases we hear in our interviews with designers, and there’s no quicker way to signpost that a room is for lounging than by chucking a massive, deep, low sofa in it, just as there’s no greater risk of the opposite by putting in the equivalent of a high, hard-backed church pew. People like to feel like they’re being well looked after by a sofa – even if they’re so well looked after they can’t actually get back to their feet without help.
