Posted on: July 27, 2007

Living Large

Super-sized sofas are fast becoming fixtures in homes, spreading bedroom coziness throughout the house

By Bev Bennett
CTW Features

When Steven Sabados shopped for a new sofa to go in his loft apartment, he didn’t put a limit on size. What he purchased was huge by any standards.

“It’s the biggest sofa – 116 inches long and 4 1/2 feet deep,” says Sabados, an interior decorator in Toronto. “I can have four people lying down watching a movie. It’s like a bed – down-filled and incredibly comfortable.”

It’s not by chance the designer compares his sofa to a bed. His piece of furniture is as deep as a twin-size bed and 26 inches longer than the prevailing 90-inch benchmark for a luxury sofa.

And Sabados isn’t alone in his preference for super-sized sofas.

“There’s an oversized thing going on,” says Peter Klick, program coordinator of design integration for the Harrington College of Design in Chicago.

People are looking for the delicious sensation of sprawling out on a bed, but in their living rooms, according to Klick.

“It’s a kind of coziness … ‘I feel good in my bed, why not in my living room,’” says Klick. Opting for an oversized sofa, in effect, he says, “is putting the bed in the living room.”

Furniture manufacturers are accommodating the snuggle-up trend by offering sofas so deep and so long that a circle of friends can sink into them.

In fact, Sabados found large sofas so seductive that he and his partner Christopher Hyndman offer their clients a custom model that is 41 inches deep. The super sofa offers “more comfort, style and scale,” he says.

With that comfort however, comes the challenge of trying to integrate the sofa into your quarters.

New homes with large family rooms are well-suited to the super-sized sofas. But even older homes with less extravagant space can accommodate large sofas.

By selecting the appropriate fabrics, accessories and even wall colors, you can make the sofa look like part of the room, rather than the main attraction.

Take the size of the room and the scale of other furnishings into account, say design experts.

“I don’t think there’s a rule for space, but you don’t want your sofa to take up the entire room,” says Becky Weber, the upholstery manager and buyer for Crate & Barrel, the home furnishings retailer based in suburban Chicago.

You’ll still want end tables, lamps and maybe a chair or two. Don’t be tempted to shrink the size of your other furnishings.

“If you have a sofa that’s oversized everything else has to be oversized. You have to fill up the room in proportion,” says Danielle Galland, a faculty member in the interior design program at Parsons The New School for Design in New York.

However, you’ll probably discover your room looks better with fewer pieces of furniture. Remove a couple of lamps, tables and chairs for a more spacious feel.

Surrounding the sofa with accessories helps to anchor the piece. Rugs are one option.

“Your rug should be a darker color than the sofa so it doesn’t seem as if the sofa is flying, as it would on a light rug,” says Klick.

Pillows are another. Layer on unusual pillows to break the expanse of sofa fabric, says Weber.

To visually shrink the sofa, keep things monochromatic, Hyndman says. “If you have bright pillows on a beige sofa you bring more attention to the sofa. Have brown on beige or a few tones of brown on beige,” says Hyndman.

Changing the color of the room’s walls also helps the sofa blend in. Avoid stark contrasts.

“If you have a chocolate-colored wall and a giant white sofa, the sofa will look even larger,” says Hyndman. To tone down the sofa, find a color in the sofa you really enjoy and paint a wall the same color.

Copyright © CTW Features