Styling Up a Small Sofa
As you may know, I live in a very small flat. We have a bedroom, bathroom and an open plan kitchen and living room which is also where my work area is. It can be quite a challenge to squeeze in everything that we need and want. Our latest big change to the living room is the sofa, what a difference a stylish seating area can make!
Over the years Simon and I have adopted a semi-minimalist lifestyle, what I mean by that phrase is that we only have items in the house that we absolutely love. We definitely aren't full minimalists and we own quite a lot of decorative pieces, but to balance that out we have very few practical items like cookware and electricals. We also only purchase furniture if we absolutely need it - our current shopping list includes a very small side table, let me know if you see one!
Anyway, we desperately wanted a new sofa. Our
when we moved in together five years ago, it was still perfectly usable but it didn't match our style and it was beginning to look scruffy. That's when I found the beautiful
.
I was so happy to find the Spitz sofa, the curved arms and back remind me of something you'd see Poirot's office. I also really love the tapered legs, a sofa with legs is crucial to us as the extra storage space underneath is very much required in such a small home. Lifting furniture onto feet also helps create a feeling of more space and a bit more flow around in the room.
I want to talk about how I styled our new sofa, we kept things pretty simple with some large grey felted wool cushions mixed in with a few smaller cushions for a layered effect. I love the contrast of the peach cushion we got in Turkey (it's made from an old kelim carpet!) and the white macramé style cushions I picked up from West Elm. We also have a very fine knit wool blanket which is actually a vintage poncho from Mexico. It's quite a special piece to me and it features an Ojo de Dios pattern which is a beautiful geometric design.
Feel free to mix pattern and texture if you're staying within a similar colour palette but be aware that small spaces can't really handle too many bold colours combined with patterns so I would choose one or the other. In our flat all our seating is teak with grey upholstery but we've used some geometric patterns in neutral tones to spice up everything a little bit.
If you have a small sofa remember that your cushions will need to be on the smaller side to ensure that everything looks balanced. Take a look at the mood board above to see how I styled up our small sofa, as you can see are used a mix of textures but stuck to a pretty neutral colour scheme.
I couldn't be happier with our new sofa, it's so nice having a really comfortable place to relax. When I was walking past
on Tottenham Court Road yesterday I noticed how much their style has changed recently, it's so refreshing to see some truly lovely sofas in their showrooms rather than those huge ones that many Londoners can't fit into their little homes!
I hope you found this post helpful and have fun styling up your sofa.