Choose your sofa carefully

Yoliswa Dube

WHETHER you call it a couch or a sofa, that large and comfortable piece of furniture in your living room can make a big impact on your colour choices for the rest of the room.

A sofa is one of the top three furniture expenditures at home, so choose your sofa carefully.

Like other major furniture purchases, your new sofa will be with you for many years.

Stop and think about it for a moment. You come home from work, and you want to relax. Where do you want to sit?

When you have guest over where do you lead them?

A sofa is one of the most essential pieces for the home. It’s the item that everything else revolves around.

To begin with, when choosing a fabric for your sofa, go with a neutral fabric. Big patterned fabrics are good for settees as an accent piece or for side chairs but not for a sofa.

Even if you don’t think so at first, you will probably get tired of looking at it for so long. If you have a bigger living room, you’ll need to decide exactly how much of the living room you want your couch to fill.

Do you want to include other couches or chairs? Do you want a coffee table? If so, a simple sofa, or one with a slight L-shape is probably the best fit.

If you’re looking for a sofa that will be the focal point of your living room, look for rounder couch shapes that take up a bit more room and provide a lot of seating.

If you have a small living room, odds are you’ll need a smaller couch. With less space, any couch or sofa is going to be in the spotlight, so it’s important to pick something that is practical, but is also of a strong design that carries and complements the rest of the space.

Successfully organising a living space starts with analysing your lifestyle. What do you do the most in that space? Do you like to wind down in front of the TV? Make sure your couch faces that direction. Love hosting game or wine nights? Create a semi-circle (or even full circle) around a central table.

Now that you’ve decided your sofa’s function, it’s time to figure out which shape will help it fulfill that purpose. A clean L-shape is great for open areas that need to be divided — such as separating the living room from the dining room.

Aesthetic is important, but functionality is key when it comes to choosing the material for your sofa. A lot of us would love to indulge in a plush, white suede sofa —they’re so gorgeous, but so dangerous.

Suede can be a poor choice if you have pets or small children who will cause some serious damage. Leather — particularly in darker colours — is consistently in style, generally wears well with age, and can be fairly easy to clean.

Re-upholstering furniture has become a relatively inexpensive option for anyone who wants to personalise a piece of furniture. If you’re too nervous to experiment with bolder colours and patterns in your sofa, you can always opt for a funky ottoman that can double as a coffee table.

It’ll add a more subtle sense of diversity to your living room, while complementing more classic couches and chairs. — Online