Tips While Choosing Furniture

Stylish Sofas For Every Budget

Sofas can take up an irritating amount of space, so if you are living in a small home avoid styles that dedicate an excessive amount of it to areas that you can’t actually sit in – read Chesterfields. If you are more of a percher than a lounger, like me, you can get away with the more pert, upright shapes influenced either by mid-century modernism (for example the little two-seaters that Designers Guild sell), or Georgian shapes, like the aforementioned Max Rollitt (the’Ruby’ by Sofa.com is an affordable version).

Rita notes: choosing the perfect sofa

Position the sofa where you most like to sit. Usually it will be somewhere the sun slants in, or where you can look out the window. I used to live in a flat where the most logical place to put it just felt wrong; something to do with draughts, doors and human traffic. Don’t overthink it. You will gravitate to where you like to be and find yourself there anyway, leaning against the wall whilst the sofa sits in the draught, unloved. Listen to yourself, and move the sofa to a place where you will actually sit in it.

Now, work out what the ‘just right’ dimensions for the other pieces would be. The width and depth of a coffee table that won’t interrupt the opening of the door to idn poker, or butt up against someone’s feet, for example. Measure any nooks that storage could slot in to.

Also note standard heights: 75cm for a table, 40cm for a coffee table, just to avoid scale mistakes (the big hazard of online furniture shopping). Mock up the configuration of the room with scale drawings on a piece of A3 paper. You could even test the real dimensions of furniture with masking tape, paper or cardboard on the floor to experiment with the layout of the room.

Keep these measurements in your phone or notebook at all times, and only look for things that will fit those spots. Go to an auction site like Ebay, the online listings for your local auction house, or platforms like Decorative Collective andVinterior. Look for character and charm, be it decorative flourishes or understated detailing.