R+C Furniture University

Should All My Upholstery Match?

Hi this is Chris from Roger and Chris and I'm here today to answer an important question for you. I need a sofa and a couple of arm chairs, should they match or should they be different?

And you know it kind of depends but one thing somebody told me once is kinda of stuck with me. One time I was talking to a customer and I said the last thing I want is for people to walk into my living room and see a sofa and a couple of arm chairs that match and think that I got it on sale. And that's a weird way to put it but I kinda get that.

If you're going through the trouble of doing custom furniture, while we're happy to do matching pieces in a lot of circumstances it is appropriate to do so you know custom is this opportunity to really do things a little bit more tailored, little bit different, little higher end. In higher end design, in our experience as designers and what we see going out in the world, people are mixing things pretty readily and they're mixing styles, mixing finishes, and mixing scale.

Frequently when you do a sofa of a certain style, say you have something that's got a big kind of roll arm on it, it's kinda of a larger scale piece If you do arm chairs of that same style, you're eating up a lot of square footage because think about the space on that arm chair that you're not sitting on. The arms, the back, all of that is gonna be the same amount of space that's used on the sofa. On the sofa it's spread out, it kinda of works but an arm chair you put a couple of those in a room, they start to eat up a lot of space really fast. So, frequently we find that we have to mix styles from a purely functional perspective. We have to have a different size, different scale chair to make it fit in the living room.

And then aesthetically I think its pleasing. I think its nice to have some variation, I think it gives you the opportunity to say hey I know I want fabric on my sofa cause that's my preference, I think its gonna be the coziest for me but I also really love leather and I found this beautiful leather I would like to use somewhere, use it on the arm chairs. Or if you're in a situation which you think I love emerald green, its gorgeous, I love that color, but my fear is if I put it on my sofa its this big emerald green monster in my living room and it might be too much for me. Okay fine do more neutral color on your sofa, use that bolder color on the chairs as an accent.

I do think that in most cases mixing furniture is going to give you the most sophisticated look. It's also harder because it's more decisions to make, and I understand that but that's when you could lean on us. Our entire sales staff at Roger and Chris we're all working designers. We know this industry inside and out, we do this all the time so we're very comfortable stepping you through this process of saying alright let's figure out the sofa first and let's figure out how all these other pieces fit in. Let's work on the scale. Let's make sure everyone is accommodated and comfortable, and let's get the style right so they coordinate better and not too matchy matchy.

If you want to do matchy matchy we're happy to do that too but I think in most cases, again we have so much at our disposal, so many great colors, so many great styles. Try mixing it in, I think you'll have a look that I think will age better, read a little higher end for you and will be more compatible with everything else that's already in your home too.

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