Corner Sofas and Chaises

I have cam e across an article here, that gives out some sofa cleaning tips. I thought it might be useful to post it here for your information.

Accidents do happen the main thing is to take immediate action if a spillage occurs on your carpet, it is important to remove it is quickly as possible, so as to avoid permanent staining or damage to the carpet pile. Scrape up solids, blot up liquids – always work from the outer edge in – NEVER OVER WET. Always dab and never scrub or rub aggressively and importantly have patience.

Sofa cushions are very absorbent so you will most likely not be able to remove all of the perspiration from inside the sofa. However, assuming your sofa can be cleaned with water (check the tag), you can try to remove the outer stain using white vinegar and a clean, dry, white cloth. Blot (do not rub) the stain, working from the outside of the stain to the center, so as not to spread the stain. Follow the vinegar with either upholstery cleaner or mix 1/2 teaspoon liquid dishwashing detergent in a quart of warm water. Beat with a mixer, and clean the furniture using only the suds. Work on a small area at a time, overlapping areas to avoid spotting. Change the rinse water frequently to keep it clean. Use a fan to thoroughly dry the furniture.

Hope this helps,
Your friends at SofaClassics

Wondering on where to get information about the British Interior Designers and Furniture experts I came across The British Interior Design Association (BIDA).

BIDA, seems to be doing a great job gathering together interior designers, organizing and disseminating information on upcoming events, offering designer selection services and even opportunity of selecting your own supplier. Should SofaClassics become a member? May be, definitely they have a case for consideration. The range of services is so wide that any generalization of BIDA would sound oversimplified, so I will leave it for your judgment.

I found a set of predictions for the year 2008 on their website that were quite useful for getting a perspective on what may become the product or the trend of the year.

Anyway, I am adding this website to the group of Bookmarks on Furniture and Design.

SofaClassics is happy to re-introduce best selling sofas, chaise-lounges and chairs which have been recently improved and redeveloped.

The Large Right Hand Chaise Longue Sofa - is designed to give your room exotic look and extravaganza of African savannah. It has the ability to be either an extra large medium or a normal sized Chaise Longue sofa with the selection of legs. A choice of legs in mahogany, antique pine, light or dark oak all French polished or waxed by hand. It has a solid dried birch frame with the joints heavily reinforced by screwing, gluing and dowelling all together to ensure lifetime durability.
It complies with fire safety regulations due to use of high quality foam fillings and new technology composites.

The Victoria Chaise Longue Sofa pictured here is a three-seater chaise longue sofa with a deep buttoned back. Although it is presented here in leather, it will look equally gorgeous with fabric upholstery. With our new contemporary selection of Casamance fabric you will be able combile the classic design with the modern touch.

The Substantial Lisbon Corner Sofa with Ottoman:
In astonishingly soft Tuscany full grain aniline leather (Peat colour) this will be a stylish yet so rationally usable addition to your living area.

Selecting the right sofas from an endless choice of different products may not be as easy as it seems. Despite the wide variety of choices, the products are usually manufactured with the market demand in mind, which unfortunately, does not focus on the needs of single individuals.

If you need a sofa, do not just go to straight to the shop. First, spend some time reflecting on what exactly you need and how you would feel of having a certain piece of furniture in your house. Visiting a store with a vague idea of what you need, you risk ending up returning you purchase. Knowing what you need before heading for shopping is important.

The Furniture Industry Research Association (Fira) , one of the leading non-governmental bodies in the furniture industry suggests to think about sofa attributes such as:

• The frame
• Springs and webbing
• Cushions
• Upholstery fabrics
• Fire safety
• Delivery
• Caring for your upholstery
• Tips when choosing upholstered furniture
Photo By FredArmitage
It is hard to underestimate the importance of all of these points. They are all stand together for better durability, safety, style and quality. However, to tick all the boxes when you buy furniture from a retail store is rarely possible.

With the changes in the current society that brings addiction to quality and long-lasting satisfaction the details are vital. To get the details right customers more and more often go to bespoke furniture providers. Only they can make the required modifications: starting from the frame up to the size of buttons.

While the custom made sofas are acquiring more and more attention of the furniture buyers in the UK, the number of companies that offer bespoke furniture services grows as well. Therefore make some research to make sure that the company you are trying to contact has a good reputation and experience in providing quality service. Due to challenges in the market only the best players survive, so one of the points to make sure your company is reliable is the time they operate. SofaClassics (http://www.sofaclassicks.co.uk) for example has been registered for more than 10 years and have got thousands of happy customers.

We have had Sofa Buying Tips in this blog earlier and hope that this post, having a different point of view on furniture selection tips may help you decide what is suitable for you and help you make your mind.

Electrolumiscent Sofa – what a fancy name! Well, should we hinder the progress and go for a classic Chesterfield sofa ignoring the plain yet technologically enhanced sofa like the one designed by Danielle Sobik.

Daniel’s sofa looks just like any other sofa in the retail shop until you sit on it. It changes as soon as you sit on it glowing into a cold blue flowery pattern. But it is not the whole technological effect that you can get out of it. The sofa will change the pattern further more adding pink flower mix to the pattern as soon as you get a company next to you. The sofa recognizes how close the person sits next to you and responds accordingly.

Would you be after a sofa that glows in the dark and twinkles in pink and blue accordingly while resting on it? It would depend on once own preferences, I assume, but most probably the majority of sofa buyers will stick to the classic, familiar and “proved to be comfortable” sofas with self-satisfactory feeling of not getting electric shock from a modern and glamorous sofa like Daniels’s one.

We are not amongst the fighters against the progress, but for those who prefer comfortable, modern and stylish furniture we offer or selection of Casamance fabric that can bring not less light and blossom to your room than any electrolumiscent one.

Trying to keep you up with the news here at SofaClassics and hope to be back with more information soon.

The accessories and lighting is probably are an important part of the interior design. There is no need to say how empty the room looks with just a sofa or chairs in it. Even if you have got the best, and the coolest sofa ever, you should take your time to think about the surrounding accessories for creating the environment you want. Setting up the lighting, choosing the lamps and tables for them should probably take the most of your efforts in decorating your home.

Mary Carol, from Scripps Howard News Service, has posted her experience and suggestions in adding the right lighting to your room. Before rushing to the shopping center for buying the lamps she suggest to think how exactly you would like the room to be enlightened and what exactly would suit your sofa and the room in general.

First, you need to get the right table. Match it to the height of your sofa. Make sure the table is neither to high nor too short in comparison to the sofa. The depth of the seating should also be considered, to make sure that the source of the light is leveled with the person seating on the sofa. Next, you need to choose a matching material for it. Try to match it to the legs of your sofa or wooden/metal details of it. If you sofa has oak legs it would probably be a good idea to choose an oak table as well. Do not forget about the size of the table: the bigger the sofa, the bigger the table.

Second, you need to make the decision of selecting the lamp, which is often the most difficult to make. Mary compares selecting the lamp to selecting a piece of art. However, the problem is not in having a little choice. It could rather be the opposite. There are many lamps for affordable prices available a number of specialized shops.

However, people often make mistakes in selecting the lighting to suit their sofas and chairs. Probably the most common mistake is selecting one, which is too small. Additional lighting from a bigger lighting will only accentuate your superb sofa that you have just got. If you prefer to read on your sofa, select a light-colored shade and make sure it is tall enough to be over your shoulder. Try not to mix all different times of materials, and if your room is preliminary occupied by furniture made of wood, metal structure might look awkward.

Finally, you might consider having table mats and covers to add a finishing touch to your room. Artistic table runners match to the fabric or leather of your sofa will add elegance to your room. Neutral table runners, like the ones you can get at SofaClassics and made from the suitable fabric set would be more than appropriate to have under your lamp.

Feel free to share your ideas and experience about selecting your accessories to the furniture by adding comments to this post.

The photo taken by chrispcampbell

The U shape corner sofas are becoming more and more popular nowadays. I was wondering what is behind this trend of buying U shape sofas.
I did some research trying to understand the popularity of U-shapes.

To accommodate a U-shape corner people have to have a comparatively large room to fill and most probably large or medium household to allow family members to get together in a cosy environment. Are the houses getting bigger or do we get more rooms in the houses recently. The first figures I have found that come from the National Statistics web site were quite impressive. It seems that the number of larger households (4 room houses) that can potentially accommodate large sofas like U-shapes or corner sofas increased significantly by 2002 overcoming the number of two-room houses by approximately 50%. The size of the houses is growing globally, despite the fact the family size tends to get smaller.

I can assume that nowadays there is a demand to fill the living areas with larger furniture peaces than it was before. However, the size cannot be the only driving stimulus for people to buy U-shapes. You can always put two peaces of Classic Knole sofas in the room to solve the problem of filling the space. Is it a matter of showing status, style or following fashion?

The answer cannot be straight forward, and there is probably a combination of factors that affects people’s decision in selecting this or the other type of sofa. The leading furniture designers such as Naughtone or Vitra also experiment and introduce larger pieces of soft furnishing or modular sofas. Avignon sofa is another contemporary corner sofa by SofaClassics upholstered with delicate leather.

So, although it seems that there are a number of factors that change the history of furnishing a house and selecting a sofa. However, the increasing size of the houses, a possibility of creating a cosy environments for friends and family, and the the desire to follow the fashion and live a certain lifestyle leads people to buy large U-shape modular or Corner Sofas.

Some time ago SofaClassics created and posted a tips for buying sofas. As a company that sells sofas on-line it was directed to improve make sure that our customers exactly what they want. Due to the nature of our business of offering bespoke sofas our main goal is to make sure that our clients consider all the details for the furniture they order.

However, it is also quite important to pay attention to a number of details when buying chairs as well. Although, we will probably have an extended version of Arm/chair buyers guide soon available on our blog and on the chair section of our website, here are a couple of important issues which need to be considered when selecting your chairs.

Reading articles on Chair design I came across one on Wikipedia, which discusses the chair design for providing maximum comfort and relaxation. The ergonomics of the chair should be taken into account by furniture designers for manufacturing a comfortable seater. The Ergonomic design can distribute the weight of the seating person to various parts of the body. It is essential to consider the needs and personal characteristics of the people who are going to use the chairs before manufacturing them, as even a simple lowering or rise of the seat can reduce pressure from one part of the body and increase it on the other.

Unfortunately, the mass producers of the chairs can only focus on the majority of the buyers, which means that a number of customers will simply remain unsatisfied or not very happy with the chairs they buy. I think companies that offer bespoke chairs like SofaClassics create an opportunity for the chair buyers to get the best from the money they pay if the needs of the customers can be considered individually. At the same time, we need to address that designing chairs taking into account the need of individual customers is quite challenging as it requires the designers to understand the need of the customer first and to tailor the chair to match the ergonomics, style, durability and size.

How much time do you spend selecting your chair? I think that in this rapidly changing and personalizing world it is important to get exactly what you need. So, I would encourage people to find bespoke furniture manufacturers and designers like SofaClassics and try to design furniture which will match their personal needs.

I would like to share the articles I have been reading recently. It is written by Shari Hiller and Matt Fox in the OrlandoSenitel.com magazine.
The article offers tips on furnishing and decorating your house. They are bringing up four points which are important in considering the decoration of the room. The tips suggest NOT to:
1. Push furniture to the walls
2. Painting not too high
3. Rely on one source of lighting
4. Disregard Privacy
5. Over-accessorize

The Image is from the Flickr page: thegloaming
1. The living room area will get a friendlier environment if the sofas are not just put under the wall but moved to the centre of the room. Despite the tradition of keeping the furniture in the centre of the room you need to try an alternative place for your sofa, chairs and the coffee table. If you are unable to bring the sofa into the centre of the room, it is suggested to keep the sofa across the corner. You can even utilize the corner by adding a tall plant in the back which will liven up the environment.
2. Paintings usually take an important part in the decoration of the room. They can add glamour and style to the room and show your taste and character. However, you need to carefully consider the location of the paintings in the room as well as the height of the hangings. Shari and Max suggest hanging a piece of art always at eye level of viewing. If the chairs or other seating are lower than usual the hangings should also be located lower. Do not forget to consider the size of the drawings, as it is very important to match the size of the art to the furniture in the room. By the way, we have got great African Paintings at SofaClassics which I am sure will look great in a living room.
3. The lighting is another crucial point that has to be taken into consideration. The experts suggest to lighten up three corners of the room besides the central part of it. You can only leave the corner which is close to the entrance as it is. Overhead lights or center ceiling fixtures will probably suit the best, so please consider them. Candelabrum can add both style and nice lighting to your corners as well.
4. When the window decoration is concerned, do not disregard the privacy of your room. You need to be in control of both the amount of light that flows into your room as well as the privacy concerns. Blinds might be the best option for some of you, adding style and perfect solution to the problem.
5. Finally, Shari and Max suggest not over-accessorizing the room. If you have many small items it is suggested to keep them in large groups rather then scattering them around the room. However, the furniture in the room is simple the accessories can enrich the room and balance the simplicity of the furniture design.