Sofas shipping for the sofas the easy way

Do you look at your lounge and wonder how you could ever have thought those neutral tones would be a good idea? If this rings bells, then be assured you are not alone.

However, rather than reach for the paint pot and risk going way too far in the other direction, stop to think about how you can build on your original choice to create a whole new look.

You may need to be clever with colour to avoid neutral being confused with boring, but it’s really easy when you know how. And a brightly coloured armchair or sofathat you love is a very good place to start.

It is true that, in many rooms, a three piece suite with a striking pattern or bright colour could be distasteful or ‘over the top’. But adding one dazzling item to a neutral room can be extremely classy indeed and, if you include a few well chosen accessories, the effect can be even more positive.

If you look at the John Lewis Lotta Armchair, shown below in Daisy Chain Pink:

This armchair can work perfectly well alongside, say, a brown leather sofa. However, you can get an even better look if you add similar cushions to the brown sofa, or pick out the pink colour and add other accessories in a similar shade, such as a vase or bowl on the coffee table, or even a strategically placed throw on the back of the sofa. Either in addition or alternatively, you could look for artwork that includes this colour. In this way, you will have transformed your room into an interesting, vibrant space, without the need for redecoration.

Now look at this amazing vintage style patchwork armchair from Notonthehighstreet.com:

A superb armchair like this gives you a wealth of possibilities for different coloured accessories. However, when you find yourself in this situation, it is often best to pick out a colour from the armchair that you particularly like (e.g., blue or orange), and stick with this when it comes to accessories. You might get away with two complementary colours, but any more and you risk a style disaster.

Also, be careful to match your shade well. For example, if you choose blue, make sure you choose the ‘right’ shade of blue for accessories. If you go to a paint store and match the blue you are looking for with a colour swatch, this will give you a handy selection of blues that will be ‘right’ for your room if you choose an armchair like this.

If you’re looking at sofas for sale, it’s important to get your priorities straight before you head to the stores. Mary Carol Garrity (Scripps Howard News Service) writes in a recent HeraldTribune.com article:

“When you think about it, a lot of life happens on your sofa. This all-important piece of furniture needs to fit you, your home and your lifestyle. To ensure you get a sofa that’s just right, avoid … common mistakes.”

Ms Garrity goes on to list five errors that it is best to avoid if you are considering sofas for sale and you can find out some good shopping tips if you click here
to read the full article.

One point that she makes is how you should always sit on the sofa you are intending to buy as if you were in your own home.

This may sound like reasonable advice, but we do not wholeheartedly agree that you’ve got to ‘be there’ to make a successful sofa purchase. Being in the business of online sofas for sale, it would be easy to make the assumption that we are more than a little bias here, but we think our personal experience is worth writing about…

Our most expensive sofa purchase turned out to be the most uncomfortable in the long term. It looked great in the shop, it matched the other furniture brilliantly (purchased from the same shop) and it was extremely comfortable. However, when it was delivered, in truth it wasn’t as much of a ‘wow’ in our lounge as it was in the store, where lighting, wall colour and all the other details had been created to make this a showpiece item. But we eventually changed the wall colour, put up suitable pictures and added cushions, etc, choosing colours that would help to blend the sofa into the room – and this worked very well… but comfort was another matter.

I often wonder if stores pay people to sit/sleep on their sofas, from the minute the store closes to when it opens the next day, so they get to a ‘lived-in’ comfort level point sooner, because what arrives at your house might look like the same sofa, but you may well have to ‘wear it in’ like a new pair of shoes before it’s anywhere near as comfortable to sit on as the demonstration item you initially fell in love with. What is more, the ‘wearing in’ process can delay discovering your spot on the new sofa – and therefore bonding with it – as you have to spend equal amounts of time on each seat to avoid an uneven result!

That sofa never did live up to our high expectations, but we had a surprisingly positive experience when we decided to ‘take a chance’ and look at sofas for sale online.

We bought a sofa bed from a well-known high street retailer. As time was too short for a visit round the various showrooms, we went online straight away with all our dimensions, etc. We found a sofa that was the perfect shape and size, and had the ‘look’ we were seeking – and we even learned about how comfortable it was from reviews from satisfied customers who had experienced our proposed sofa in their own home!

Though it can be great fun to wander around a furniture showroom and talk to knowledgeable sales people, this experience proved to us that the ‘in store’ method is by no means essential when it comes to buying a sofa you will love to live with. Surprisingly to us at the time, looking at sofas for sale online offered an opportunity to focus our minds on what would be a perfect fit for our home, and reduced the possibility of us being caught off guard by the ‘wow’ of the showroom and making an impulse purchase we could regret later.

Here’s the problem. You have a large lounge, but it feels pretty cold and your old three piece suite is looking rather forlorn somewhere in the middle because it looked even worse when positioned around the edges. You’ve thought about putting up a partition, particularly as you could really use a study, but this seems like a lot of work and you don’t know where to start. If this sounds familiar, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of corner sofas…

Corner sofas open up a range of possibilities for cosy living – and you can even experience the kind of benefits you would normally only glean from creating an extra room!

Make the most of your space

If you are serious about making the most of your over-sized room, corner sofas are definitely worth considering. For example, how great would it be to move a few pieces of furniture around to define a separate space that could act as your study? Well, corner sofas offer you the opportunity to do exactly that. What you are aiming for is to use the enormous adaptability that corner sofas have to offer to shrink your room down to a manageable level. If you think about where you would ideally like that partition, corner sofas can be moved around quickly and easily to leave a clear area for your study behind the seating. This is how corner sofas can help to give an impression of cosiness while increasing the functional possibilities of your living space.

Be clever with rugs

You can add to this impression with separate rugs for each area that you’re already defined through the positioning of corner sofas, and it might even be possible to paint the walls that relate closest to your new “rooms” in different shades, though obviously you will need to make sure that these colours complement each other rather than clash. You can get advice on this in your local DIY store.

Choose how you use your space

Of course, if you need peace and quiet to study and your kids think corner sofas are ideal for sprawling over while watching the TV loudly, then you may decide against your additional area being allocated for study. But the new space, that has been made possible by the fantastic innovation that is corner sofas, may be perfect for dining, thereby freeing up your dining room which can become a home office or just a place for quiet contemplation.

Where to find corner sofas

So think about that partition and introduce yourself to suitably sized corner sofas at your local furniture showroom, or explore what’s available online.

If you’re thinking of getting a new sofa but are not sure which colour to choose, then read on…

There is a multitude of shades available to anyone looking at sofas for sale in the UK, but sometimes the colour choice can seem overwhelming. Also, you may have decorated your room with a colour scheme that you are not likely to keep for more than a few years.So, if you’re looking at spending money on a new sofa, wouldn’t it be great if you knew you were buying something that will outlast your existing decor?

Instead of spending time deliberating which colour sofa to buy,

you could consider a neutral shade instead that will allow you to add colour through accessories such as cushions.Then, when you get the urge to decorate again, you won’t have to worry about the financial outlay of a new sofa, because you would only need to get new cushions.

Choosing the right cushions can add a real ‘wow’ factor to your whole room.If this is what you are looking for, it’s worth giving your time to having a proper look at the range of cushion designs available to buyers in the UK.If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you might like to consider buying some fabric and making your own cushion covers, which can be extremely satisfying for anyone with a bit of crafty flair.

Here’s a video that explains clearly how you can do this in simple steps.The video covers how to make a cushion cover where the cushion pad is sewn in, and also looks at how to make an envelope cushion, which gives the option of removing the cover for washing, etc.

Whether you choose to add colour to your room through the fabric or leather of your new sofa, or through accessories such as cushions, we hope you will be happy with your new purchase for many years to come.

The Furniture Ombudsman recently clamped down heavily on a retailer, ordering them to refund a customer they’d deemed a little too weighty for his new sofa.

Sophie Hazen reported in the Yorkshire Evening Post:

“Michael Woolf, 77, from Shadwell, Leeds, was told by furniture retailer Barker and Stonehouse that his 15st weight was to blame for his cushions constantly falling flat. He was also told the two-piece settee from the store’s Canterbury range was designed for lounging, not dining,

and criticised for eating off his lap in front of the television… ” [click here for the full article]

In the first instance, it occurs to us that, here in the UK, 15st is not an unusually large load for one person to be carrying and therefore would not seem particularly relevant when looking at sofas for sale – and definitely not worth mentioning to a furniture salesman in the showroom. However, the biggest question that arises is: “If I buy a sofa, why on earth should it concern the retailer if I choose to eat on it?!?” And there’s nothing nicer than fish ‘n’ chips sitting on the sofa on a Friday night, is there?

Of the many things people are known to do on sofas, we would have thought that eating was likely to cause the least damage to the supporting springs, which turned out to be the problem in the case of Mr Woolf’s settee. Admittedly, if your children use your sofa as a trampoline, or your dog goes bananas on it every time someone rings at the door, or if you get caught up with your partner in the throes

of passion in front of a DVD on a Saturday night, then maybe the retailer would have a case to answer.

But many people, particularly those living alone, don’t relish the thought of eating their meal in silence at the dining table when they can watch TV while they chomp instead from the comfort of their lounge. And, after all, how likely is it that a single meal – even a large one – might weigh so much that tips the balance of the scales and makes your cushions sink?

Now, if you had a dog like the adorable Sprout, who you can meet in this video, then it might be a different story for those guys with stores offering sofas for sale…

Click here for more on Steven Lilley