Is there a task more fraught with danger yet exciting possibility than buying a new sofa?
It’s so scary because you’re stuck with it, is the thing. I’m sure you can send back a sofa – but has anyone actually ever done it? You can also spend an unlimited sum of money on a sofa and I don’t know about you but I don’t see that as a challenge – it just sends me scurrying back to Loaf.
Loaf, with their rock-bottom prices and their chirpy marketing has duped me into buying one boring grey sofa and one massive corner sofa that is so badly designed that it sort of spits you out onto the floor if you try to sit on it. With the corner sofa came a free Loaf -branded mug. The base of the mug bears the legend “What a mug!” which is revealed to anyone watching as you tip the cup up to drink. And, yeah, that’s how Loaf make me feel sometimes.
We needed a new sofa. And with the kids no longer babies, we could get a nice-ish one. One that perhaps also didn’t require constant plumping to look okay. I looked at despair at the prices at George Smith, thinking “Fuck it, shall we just bankrupt ourselves and get one?” I even went to DFS, but was uninspired.
I am haunted by the story of my friend Katie who bought this horrendous sofa for their house when really tired and hungover one day and then it arrived and it was awful, but they stuck with it for 7 years, hating it every single day that they walked into their living room and saw it there. They finally deciding that they had paid the price for their crapulence, gave it away on a furniture recycling scheme and went out and got a new one. Sober.
As it happened, around the time that I was looking at George Smith and visiting DFS, I was invited to a showcase for a company called Love Your Home. I had not researched properly what they do and was really just going for the advertised canapés, when I showed up and it turns out that they make sofas. Great sofas, for not George Smith prices.
“We’ll make you a sofa,” they declared, confidently, after I told them about the corner sofa and the mug thing. And they did. I went to their showroom, in Haslemere and picked out and incredibly handsome fellow called Clementine (sofas can be gender fluid, too) and had it made in a brave – I thought – velvet claret material.
I am bored with grey. And I have seen too many dark blue sofas on Instagram. You are all going to tell me now that velvet sofas attract dust and I know and I don’t care.
What can I say? I love it. I love my sofa because I don’t have to think about it any more. I am free from the burden of hating a really large and expensive piece of furniture but having to live with it – like getting divorced but having to live in the same house because MONEY. That verstinken corner sofa is in my house in Gloucestershire a hundred miles away and at some point, most days I will sit for five or ten seconds and think about how much I hate it.
Anyway I love Love Your Home and their no-nonsense, non-cutesy, anti-Loaf vibes. I sort of think they should change their name to make it more obvious what they do but when I suggested it they were a bit like “Who’s doing this, us or you?” So I quietly took my discount and my sofa and went home.
Gorgeous sofa, my whole house is grey and its big I don’t know what to do about it. I also now hate grey and have done for a while.
Oh I know just what you mean, its a family joke in our house aka ‘mums changing the sofa again’ I never seem to pick the right colour or comfort level.
I am really glad your latest one is fit for purpose and looks good too.
Our very worst one was a leather one low and squishy but by bedtime both of us had gradually slipped down to a slanting position – I said we need to Velcro ourselves to it to remain in a seated position. But it did look great so it was passed down to two daughters till eventually went to charity.
I will definitely look at ‘love your home’ for my next one. thanks for the tip xxx
It actually said “what a mug”!! They’re mugging you off mate.
When I am in a position to afford a new one I will definitely be looking at these. We bought a new sofa and then moved house a few months later. Perfect in old house completely wrong in new😫. X
I paid someone to choose my sofas. They nailed it.
I got a second-hand George Smith one on eBay and had it recovered. Came in at £1700 and looks stunning. Much better to buy a top quality second-hand sofa than a new/fashionable one that won’t age well at all.
top tip!
THIS. 100%.
Oh Esther, I took my fucking PRESCHOOL CHILDREN to buy sofas at DFS and ended up buying a hideously uncomfortable beast in the WRONG COLOUR (colour swatches were upside down) and obviously you DON’T SEE IT AGAIN until it ARRIVES WEEKS LATER and then I realised my error too late.
So for nearly six years, I have been resenting this sofa, missing my gorgeous huge leather beast that I ruined by GIVING BIRTH ON IT AND HAEMORRHAGING but I will not buy a new one until youngest is potty trained. And he’s autistic and uninterested.
But one day. And when that day comes…I shall look at this site.
We have had our grey linen sofas for over 30 years now, 2 x two-seaters and 1 big armchair £1200, which was massive then but I don’t think they owe us anything now. But mohair velvet in turmeric … oh my! Now you’re talking.
We have a 3 seater from Harrods sale 32 years ago. As comfy as ever. Sadly, I recovered it 5 years ago in a plain fabric – it now looks so fussy as a pattern hides detail.
I’m looking to choose better fabric next time. Very hard to get rid of a good piece
I have made the mistake of re-recovering in the wrong fabric… it’s an expensive mistake!
ooh, me too. Slightly ugly, very comfy sofa now looks awful plain and needs chintz! SO annoying.
I love the idea that you sit thinking about how much you hate your old sofa!! I think we all have that piece of furniture that haunts us for one reason or another.. Mine is my beautiful mattress which gives my husband backache so now resides in my daughter’s room.. She gets my heavenly mattress and I feel like I sleep on a board!!!
If you want to change the soda in Gloucestershire I recommend Sofa Riot in Wotton under Edge. The did a custom build Eames style for us. They’re fab and let you try out your sofa in the factory before they ship it
I sent my sofas back… it was DFS and it was facilitated due to a technicality that they omitted to tell me at point of sale, but they arrived and I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE WERE THINKING and we had to wait 6 weeks and it was agony but we got there. Sofa shopping: sounds like fun, is actually hellish
Has a tone got a Lignet Roset TOGO? I’m a bit in love with them but… at 62 I wonder if they’d be super good for my knees or the undoing of them (from getting up)
I looked at the George Smith website. $13,000 for a sofa! They are having a laugh surely? No wonder you didn’t buy one.
YES! exactly famously expensive. though there are second hand ones available on eBay x