Choosing a sofa

Some suggestions in a cluttered and confusing market

Visitors to our showroom, and customers contacting us through our website, often ask us Sofas & Stuff staff for advice and help in choosing the most appropriate sofa for their particular circumstances and décor. Key concerns are choice of style for a particular decor, what fabric to chose, along with concerns about build quality, value for money and the care and treatment of sofas.

A useful analogy, and a tangible example of our approach to the design and manufacture of sofas, is the leather jacket I bought in the Kings Road in the 1980s, which I still wear and which has lasted brilliantly, despite all the hard wear and tear it has been subjected to over many years. The jacket is exceptionally well made, it has a classic design, the leather from which it is made not only lasts very well but improves with age, and as a result it has given me huge pleasure and been great value for money.

The same principles should apply to the purchase and ownership of a sofa.

In choosing a sofa design, potential buyers are subjected to a bewildering array of styles, including the many different ‘sofas on steroids’ offered by high street chains and advertised heavily on television and in national newspapers. Whatever these sofas may be, they are unlikely to retain the appeal and longevity of a design classic, in the same way that my leather jacket is a design classic that has lasted.

But being a design classic does not mean that a sofa has to be stuck in the past. At Sofas & Stuff we design and produce not only sofas which are design classics but we also take existing designs and give them a modern interpretation, producing design ‘classics with a twist’. So, for example, our wing chair has wings which are larger than normal and the legs are in a tapered fifties style. The same is true of other furniture in the range. We offer a classic Chesterfield but it is not in the traditional leather but in linen, making a design that can sometimes seems stuck in a time warp look fresh and interesting. Naturally we also offer a full range of classic styles, styles which do not go out of date and which complement a wide variety of room styles.

Sofas from Sofas & Stuff are exceptionally well made: a huge effort has been put into making them comfortable to sit in, most covers are removable and washable, springs are high quality, and the foam used is Duratech (which has a Gold Star award from the Furniture Industry Research Association). All sofas are also backed up by a 5-year guarantee.

Special attention is paid to ensuring that customers are clear about exactly what they are ordering, and that they are happy with their sofas when they receive them.  We go to the nth degree to try to get things right for every customer. Once a customer has ordered a sofa they are sent a sample of the fabric they have chosen, to ensure that their understanding of the colour matches the exact colour being used. Customers who are undecided about fabrics can get free fabric samples delivered to them within 48 hours.

Customers can find there nearest showroom online at our website, we have 12 showrooms across the UK with staff members who will help you to find the perfect sofa for your home! Our head office is a renovated barn in a beautiful rural location near Petworth in West Sussex, with other showrooms in Hungerford and London (Parsons Green).

Michael Curran