A note on the pictures. The cover and two of the pictures below were altered with AI. Every piece of furniture in them is ours.

Most people choose a sofa from a photograph.

It is the single most expensive piece of furniture in the house, the one that gets used every evening for the next ten years, and the decision is usually made by looking at it on a screen for four minutes.

We keep sofas at the studio so clients can sit on them. When that is not enough, we take people out to try several in person before anything is ordered. It sounds like a small thing. It is the part of our process that changes the most minds.

Here is why.

Comfort does not photograph

A sofa in a photograph gives you the shape, the colour and the fabric. It gives you none of the things that decide whether you will actually use it. Seat depth. The angle of the back. How firm the foam is on the third evening rather than the first minute. The height of the arm, which matters enormously if you are the person in the house who reads lying down.

Depth is the question nobody asks

A deep seat is wonderful if you fold your legs up and settle in. It is uncomfortable if you sit upright with your feet on the floor, because your back never reaches the cushion and you spend the evening propped on cushions solving a problem the sofa created. Neither depth is better. They are different sofas for different people, and most households contain both people.

Bring the other person

Someone who is 1.60 and someone who is 1.90 will not agree, and the sofa has to work for both. Better to find that out in a showroom than in your living room.

None of this is complicated. It just requires being in the same room as the object.

Comfort before trends is the first thing we say about how we work, and this is where it stops being a phrase. A sofa that photographs well and sits badly is a failure, however good the room looks in the photographs afterwards.