Sofas and Accessories: Pulling a Living Room Together

A living room comes together around the sofa. Get that right and the rest of the room has something to work with. This is not the step-by-step guide to choosing the sofa itself, that is covered separately, so here the focus is on style, on the accessories that finish the space, and on how buying ex-display gets you a better piece than the budget alone suggests.

Start with the style, not just the size

Sofas have a character before they have a size. A low, deep, softly stuffed sofa says relax and sprawl. A firmer piece with slim arms and legs reads neater and takes up less visual room even when the footprint is similar. Neither is better, they just set a different tone, so decide what you want the room to feel like before you get lost in dimensions.

Think about the shape of the room too. A long room takes a straight three-seater well down one wall. A squarer room, or an open-plan space that needs zoning, often works better with a corner sofa that turns the seating in on itself and gives the area an edge. The corner sofas range is worth a look if you are trying to define a seating area rather than just line one up against a wall.

Fabric sets the mood

The cover does as much for the feel as the shape. A textured weave in a warm neutral is forgiving and easy to build a room around. A deeper colour makes the sofa the thing you notice first, which is a fine choice if the rest of the room stays calm around it. Have a look through the fabric sofas to see how different weaves and tones change the whole character of a piece before you settle on one.

Layering in the accessories

A sofa on its own is furniture. A sofa with the right things around it is a room. Accessories are where a space stops looking like a showroom line-up and starts looking like somewhere people actually sit.

Lighting is the piece most people underuse. One central ceiling light flattens everything. Add a floor lamp beside the sofa and a smaller lamp on a side table, and the room gains corners of warmth you can actually read by. Mirrors are the other quiet workhorse. A decent mirror on the wall opposite a window throws daylight back into the room and makes a small space feel larger without any building work.

Then the softer layer: cushions, a throw over one arm, a rug that sits under the front legs of the sofa to anchor the seating. The home decor section is where these bits live, and they are the cheapest way to change a room's mood once the big pieces are in.

Mixing new, ex-display and clearance

There is no rule that a room has to be bought all at once or all from one place. Some of the best rooms mix a new piece you chose carefully with an ex-display find that cost half what it should have and a clearance oddment that happened to be perfect. The mix is what stops a room looking like a catalogue page.

A sensible approach is to spend where it shows and save where it does not. Put the budget into the sofa, because you sit on it every day and you look at it constantly, then let the accessories be where you hunt for a bargain. A clearance mirror or an end-of-line lamp does exactly the same job as a full-price one.

Why ex-display gets you more sofa for the money

The reason ex-display works so well for sofas is simple. A showroom sofa has been chosen to sell the range, so it is often a good fabric and a well-made frame, the piece the shop wanted people to sit on and want. When the range changes or the floor is refreshed, that sofa has to go, and it goes at a price the same model never carries new.

That means the ex-display budget stretches to a better sofa than the new budget would buy. Instead of the entry-level model at full price, you can often have the mid-range or premium one for similar money, because it happens to be the one that stood on the floor. Browse the sofas and chairs range with that in mind and judge pieces on the fabric and frame rather than assuming the cheapest listing is the best value.

Do read the listing for notes on wear, as you would with any display piece. A sofa that has been sat on by passing shoppers is a very different thing from one that has been lived on for years, and most showroom sofas have had an easy life. Because you buy straight from the seller here, you can ask about anything the photos do not make clear.

Bringing it together

Choose the sofa for the feel you want and the shape of the room. Build the accessories around it in layers, lighting first, then mirrors, then the soft bits. Spend on the sofa and save on the trimmings. When you are ready to pull the wider look together, the home interiors range has the pieces that turn a sofa and four walls into a room you want to sit in.