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Luxury designers and homeowners are placing playful, bold and colorful seating at the heart of the home, writes Francesca Perry
A luxurious purple sofa in the Zappa Nest guest house in the Hollywood Hills. Photograph: © Clemens Kois
Of all the spaces in a home, the living room is a place for balancing practical needs with a carefully curated style: comfort and prestige in one. As interior designers and homeowners embrace more maximalist-infused visions—rich in color, craft and detail—so the humble couch is moving into the spotlight. Informed by design heritage, yet firmly rooted in the present, statement sofas are the perfect accent for luxury living, capturing attention while still accommodating the whole family.
Traditionally, many homes have included both a formal salon for welcoming guests and a private lounge for the family. Today, reception rooms tend to bring both functions together, meaning the space has to work harder. A plain sectional that blends into the background might deliver on functionality, but can’t always provide the inspiration that many people seek from their home environment. The question is: can comfortable things be stylish?
Contemporary furniture design certainly suggests it can. Showcased recently at the collectible design fair PAD in London, French studio Pradier-Jeauneau’s Waves sofa resembles an ancient monument, emerging elegantly yet powerfully from the ground.
Jérémy Pradier-Jeauneau’s Waves sofa, which debuted at PAD, London. Photograph: Arthur Minot
“Why settle for a boring sofa when you can have a jewel?” says studio founder Jérémy Pradier-Jeauneau. For him, it’s about “expressing personality”—as one might through a fashion accessory like a Chanel bag or a Cartier bracelet. “You don’t compose an interior without boldness any more than you build a look without a statement piece,” he continues. “The sculptural sofa is that chic manifesto: an artwork to live with, where comfort becomes an idea. It’s the piece that makes all the difference.”
Rather than a furnishing afterthought, the right sofa can become a core part of the interior vision—with some designers creating bespoke pieces for clients’ homes.
LA-based Another Human designs furniture and spaces that are colorful, creative and full of personality. For a bright and airy home in Los Feliz, California, the studio made a large curved blue sofa the focus for the double-height living room. Reflecting a serpentine fireplace of a similar hue, the sofa snakes across the room, enabling guests to face in different directions within the open-plan entertaining space.
Another Human’s bespoke sofa design reflects the color and curves of the fireplace opposite in this Los Feliz home. Photograph: Lance Gerber
“The sofa becomes a conversation starter,” says Leah Ring, Another Human’s designer and founder, “and the scale and bold style set the aesthetic tone for the room.”
Every living space is different and every homeowner has their own needs, so modular seating—with its potential for different sizes and layouts—offers attractive flexibility. Modularity need not simply be a case of fitting furniture to the dimensions of space, however. Designers are finding exciting and playful solutions for a format more often associated with practicality.
In Paris, an exuberant apartment by French architecture and interior design studio Uchronia features a wiggling pink modular sofa in the library—a 1969 design by Verner Panton. Offsetting the traditional wooden paneling and decorative fireplace, the sofa becomes an artistic gesture that makes the room sing.
A 1969 Verner Panton sofa in a Paris apartment designed by Uchronia. Photograph: Félix Dol Maillot
“A bold sofa immediately sets the emotional tone of a living space,” says Uchronia founder Julien Sebban. “It transforms the room from something purely functional into a place of expression and energy.” In turn, an exciting living space “doesn’t just look good,” he says. “It influences how you feel, how you interact and how you experience home as a vibrant, living environment, rather than a neutral backdrop.”
Indeed, the embrace of statement sofas today—as a territory of creative possibility and expressive potential—has precedent in the time of designers like Panton. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, amid the rise of leisure time, the polite sofas of midcentury modernism became softer, more curvaceous and sculptural, often harnessing modularity in large pieces that dominated rooms.
At times, the sofa became a landscape to climb on or sink into. It was this period of experimentation that gave us the sunken conversation pit of wraparound soft seating, as well as classics such as the ultra-relaxed, bed-like Ligne Roset Togo sofa (designed by Michel Ducaroy in 1973) and the expansive Dune ensemble (1969-1972) by Pierre Paulin. The latter’s four geometrically designed modules combine to create a topography of soft, dune-like seating. It looks as futuristic as it did when it debuted more than 50 years ago.
A green Togo sofa in an Upper West Side apartment designed by Space Exploration and styled by Katja Greeff. Photograph: Nicole Franzen
Kevin Greenberg, founder of Brooklyn-based interior design studio Space Exploration, gravitates to 1970s designs when he wants a sofa to steal the spotlight in a living space. “Maestros like Mario Bellini, Tobia and Afra Scarpa, Michel Ducaroy, Mario Marenco and Arne Norell helped pioneer a golden age of low-slung, formally daring (and often modular) seating collections that are sure to enliven any room,” he says.
Greenberg recommends choosing sumptuous upholstery—particularly rich tones of velvet and suede—to “ensure your couch is as comfortable as it is commanding.” A statement sofa can achieve what its name indicates: communicating the power of design. But it also enriches the everyday. As Uchronia’s Julien Sebban sees it: “Living with expressive shapes, strong colors or unexpected materials stimulates creativity and joy on a daily basis.”
Now you have your statement seating, here’s how to go bold with bedroom decor
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Natalie Davis
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