A living room is the only room in a house that has to do four unrelated jobs at once — sit six people, seat one person reading, hold a television, and still be walked through. No single piece solves that, which is why living room furniture is the hardest category to buy and the one most often bought as a three-piece set that solves none of it.
The way through is to decide the seating geometry first and let everything else follow from it.
Start with the seating shape, not the sofa
There are three workable arrangements and the room usually picks one for you.
Facing
Two sofas opposite each other, or a sofa facing two chairs. Best for conversation, worst for television. Needs a room at least 13 feet across to leave a walkway, and it is the arrangement that makes a square room read as deliberate rather than empty.
L-shaped
A sofa with a return, or a sofa plus a chaise. Seats the most people per square foot and gives everyone a view of the same wall, which is why it dominates in rooms built around a screen. It also kills one corner of the room for circulation.
Floating
Seating pulled off the walls, with a console behind it. Counter-intuitive in a small room but almost always correct in a large one — furniture pushed to the perimeter makes a big room feel like a waiting area, not a bigger room.
The measurements that decide whether it works
Leave 30 to 36 inches for any walkway through the room, and 18 inches between the front of the seating and the coffee table. Less than 14 inches and you cannot get past the table to sit down; more than 20 and you cannot reach a cup.
A coffee table should be about two-thirds the length of the sofa and its top within two inches of the seat height, above or below. A side table should finish level with the arm it sits beside, or an inch or two lower.
For a television, the usual working figure is a screen diagonal of roughly half the viewing distance in inches — nine feet back, around a 55-inch screen. The console underneath should be wider than the screen, not narrower, which is the detail most media units get wrong.
Shop living room furniture by category
The anchor piece is a sofa, and the choice is really between three constructions. A fabric sofa is the standard answer for a room that gets daily use — the Anya, Harmony and Thora are upholstered in faux mohair and woven fabrics, and the Woods and Rialto cover the leather end. Where the room needs to seat more than three, a modern sectional sofa does it in the same footprint by turning a corner.
The third construction is the one worth understanding properly: a modular sectional couch is built from separate pieces that bolt or clip together, so the shape can change when the room does. Swift, June, Davie, Matina, Cates, Form, Naomi and Lino all come as systems rather than fixed sofas, and the modern modular components range sells the individual armless chairs, corners and ottomans that extend one later. That is the single thing this catalogue does that most furniture retailers do not.
For the second seat, an upholstered accent chair is where the room gets its character — the Stevie Lounge Chair, Luxley Club Chair, Salzburg Club Chair and Verlaine Armchair are four quite different silhouettes. A oversized chaise lounge chair does the same job for someone who reads rather than sits upright, and a storage ottoman doubles as a footrest, a seat and somewhere to put throws — the Heidi and Swift Storage Ottomans both open.
On surfaces, a large coffee table sets the centre of the arrangement and a narrow end table serves each seat that is not next to it — the Caro Side Table in travertine or Rosso Alicante marble and the Carrie Side Table are the two weights. Behind a floating sofa or along an entry wall, a small entryway table closes the arrangement; the Round Off Floating Console Table is the wall-mounted option.
For the screen and the storage, a black tv stand carries the television and the boxes under it — the Hobbs Media Unit, Jenson Media Unit and Theo Media Bench are the main widths. Everything that is not a screen goes in a tall bookcase: the Eero and Nolan Bookcases are open, the Hannah and Wilde Cabinets are closed, and a room usually needs one of each.
Why a modular system is a different purchase
A fixed sofa is bought for the room you have now. A modular system is bought for the next three rooms as well, because the same pieces reconfigure from an L to a U to two separate sofas, and extra components can be added years later from the same range.
The practical consequences are worth knowing before you choose. A modular system costs more up front for the same seat count. It is easier to get up a stairwell, because it arrives in pieces. And it is the only seating that survives a move to a differently-shaped room without being replaced.
