In Search Of The Perfect Sofa

Decorating a home is a never-ending process.  Unless you are one of the super lucky ones who can afford to hire a decorator who totally gets you, give him/her an unlimited budget to buy everything all at once, and then sit back and admire your lovely home for all eternity.  Unfortunately, I am not one of those lucky people.

We moved in to our new home last September, and since then, I have been busy furniture shopping, decorating, redecorating, arranging & rearranging everything that isn’t nailed down.  The living room alone has undergone several major upheavals.  The console table has been placed in 5 different places, including our bedroom (where it currently holds the 2nd tv.)  Don’t even get me started on the bookshelf. 

My husband and I have one major rule when it comes to our furniture purchases: no compromise. It’s either we love an item totally without reservation, or we don’t buy it at all. This has effectively slowed down the process, I tell ya.  We’re still using our 7-year old sofa (our one major purchase when we were still renting) because we still haven’t found the one sofa that we can both agree on.

I want to say goodbye to dreary brown furniture.  I don’t want our living room to look like a hotel lobby. While I’m not necessarily going for an all-white look, I do want a general light feeling in it.   Here are my candidates:

Number one on my list is the Florence Knoll sofa.  I LOVE it to bits! It’s probably the only mid-century modern piece that I covet with my entire being. I love the clean lines, the tufting, and the fact that it’s white! It’s modern and fancy at the same time — which is so ME! =) It’s expensive though.

The 2nd one is the Bernhardt Fulton Tufted Sofa.  Look at those graceful lines, the tufting, the high arms! But it’s covered in fabric, which is totally not a good idea when you have two young boys.

Number 3 is the Karlstad sofa from Ikea. Not actually a bad choice, and it will match the armchair that we already have. Only, I don’t want the sofa and the armchair to match perfectly because then it will look like a catalog set-up, you know what I mean?  But it’s  pretty close to the Florence Knoll sofa, so I’m definitely considering this one.

Four and 6 are actually very similar, and if not for the colors, I won’t mind having any of those.  I love the sheen of the fabrics, but they will only work if the fabrics were dark. And I don’t want dark furniture anymore.  Number 5 is ok. It’s not tufted, but the lines are great, and it’s modern but looks really comfy, and it’s not bulky.  Again, it’s fabric. Unless of course, the fabric was washable. Hmmm.