How To Choose The Right Sofa for Your Living Room
June 20, 2011
For many people, the thought of buying a sofa brings on a major anxiety attack. It suggests permanence and being a responsible adult, or is a big pain in the neck as well as a very large expense. It’s a good idea to be sure you really need or want a sofa because this isn’t something you buy on impulse, and you may make several trips to different showrooms before making a final choice. It is not, as many would believe, an absolute necessity, but it’s usually a piece of furniture everyone wants in a living room. Because it’s the anchor of a room, it’s best to look for one with classic lines. This isn’t the place to be trendy.
Upholstery Fabric
Picking out a sofa style is just the beginning. Once you’ve selected the sofa, you’ll be faced with the prospect of having it upholstered in any one of thousands of fabrics. It’s enough to unhinge the most informed shopper. The way you see the sofa displayed in the showroom isn’t the way you have to live with it. You have lots of options, but you should know that some fabrics can as much as double the cost of the original sofa. Knowing this fact will enable you to edit out those fabrics that will move it out of your price range and concentrate only on those fabrics you can afford. In this way you’ll find the project exciting and challenging.
Fabric Colors and Patterns
When it comes to upholstery, it’s best to choose a solid color if your sofa will be placed against a wall. This will give you options for paint colors, wallpaper and drapery fabrics. If the sofa is placed out in the room, you can more easily get away with a pattern.
Neutral colors are always the safest and you can add colorful printed throw pillows for accent and excitement. Furthermore, you can change the look of a room more easily when the largest piece is a neutral such as beige, ivory or something in an earth tone. Shades of green are quite popular. This doesn’t mean that the fabric has to be plain and dull. Textured fabrics, such as damask or linen, in shades of neutral can be quite interesting.
Take Your Time
Don’t hesitate to ask to take fabric samples home with you to see how they will look in the room. While they are only samples, you can see if the color and print will go with the wall or rug colors and any other items you’ve already decided to put in that room.
Take your time and be as sure as you can about your choices. It will then take about six more weeks from ordering to delivery time. In those weeks you can actually forget what the sofa looks like. I knew a couple who were surprised when their sofa was delivered. They were convinced they had ordered something that looked entirely different. Take time to fall in love. You’ll be grateful every time you curl up with a book and a cup of tea, sink back for an afternoon of TV watching, or simply walk through the room and take it all in.
A Little Knowledge Goes a Long Way
With a little background knowledge you’ll be able to enter a showroom with confidence, ask intelligent questions and ultimately choose a sofa that will fit in with your lifestyle and the other furnishings in the room. Knowledge will also enable you to buy the very best quality item you can get for the amount you’ve allocated.
Usually a conservative approach is safest when buying expensive items. A sofa is an investment. You want it to grow by giving you a good return on your money. The return is that you love it more and more every day.
Undoing a Mistake
It’s unlikely that after doing your homework and taking the time to select the right sofa, you’ll find the colours or pattern are all wrong in the room. However, such a mistake can be rectified with slipcovers. This is an expensive solution. It’s better to get it right the first time.
In Praise of Comfort Above All
Every top decorator agrees that a sofa, more than any other piece of furniture, must be comfortable and classic in design. And they stress comfort, even over style. After all, if every time you sit on your sofa and feel the cushions are too hard or it’s too deep for gracefully getting up from, or you avoid stretching out on it, then it doesn’t matter how beautiful it is.
New York interior designer Mark Hampton knows the key to a good sofa: naps. “I would much rather take a nap downstairs on a big, soft sofa than go upstairs to bed,” he says.
Other Options
A polyurethane foam wrapped with down and feathers creates a firm but soft feel, and the seat cushions will retain their shape under great pressure. These sofas are much less expensive than those made entirely of down, and some people even prefer them. The foam makes the sofa a little firmer.
An all-foam sofa is inexpensive and will last eight to ten years. It’s not as comfortable as some others but it’s practical. It’s good to know that wherever you look for a sofa, you’ll always find a wide selection of all-foam sofas to fit your budget. This might be a good way to go until you can afford a better sofa. You’ll certainly get your money’s worth and then you can toss it.
What It Says
A sofa speaks volumes. If it’s stiff and formal, it says one thing. If it’s big and plump, it says another. Sometimes the style of a room dictates the type of sofa it should contain. If you’ve just moved into a house in the countryside, for example, you might consider a casual, relaxed-looking love seat or sofa. For a more formal look, consider a tufted or tailored sofa. A chesterfield leather tufted and rolled-arm sofa and a tuxedo sofa are considered to be cliches among venerable, classic designs and have maintained their position in the “not so comfortable but always reliably stylish” category.
New Ideas for Decorating an Old Bathroom
June 20, 2011
Bathrooms can be wonderful little environments, created with just a few elements. You can do wonders with paint, wallpaper, fabric, floor covering and accessories. The bathroom is the one space you can transform with a little ingenuity.
A couple of years ago my husband and I took a plain, uninteresting powder room in a condominium and transformed it for a decorating magazine. The toilet and sink were plain white porcelain and the floor was covered with gray linoleum. The walls were painted light gray, and there was a large and obvious crack in the wall facing the door. The first thing we did was repair the crack with a putty knife and spackle. This takes minutes. Once the spackle dries, you simply sand it smooth.
Faux Finish for Walls
We then chose a light coral, semigloss latex paint to give the room a soft glow. Semigloss or glossy paint is better than flat latex paint for bathrooms because it is more durable and scrubbable. Once the first coat of paint was dry, we mixed the same color paint with a medium-tone glaze. Premixed transparent glazes come in light, medium and dark shades and are available in home centers. Mixing the glaze with paint in just the right proportions is easy to do by following the directions on the can. Using a natural sponge and the glaze mixture, we sponge-painted the walls to give them an overall texture. By mixing the glaze with the same color as the background, the sponging effect is very subtle and the walls become translucent, which gives them depth.
For the Finale
Self-sticking vinyl tile squares in a coral color were easy to install right over the linoleum floor. We painted a narrow shelving unit, found in a thrift shop, deep green. This was placed against the wall between the toilet and sink to hold small plants, collectibles, folded guest towels and a ceramic dish filled with soaps. The finishing touch was a colorful painting by the homeowner that we hung on the wall where the crack used to be, just over the shelving unit.
An old-fashioned, ornately framed oval mirror (found in a seconds shop) fit on the wall over the sink, flanked by inexpensive, half-round wall lighting fixtures. We put a large, handcrafted clay pot with a flowering plant on the floor in a dead corner between the sink pedestal and the wall and filled a basket with multicolored hand towels to place on the back of the toilet. A wicker wastebasket was all that was needed to complete the simple but tastefully decorated room, which cost very little to make over.