When clients or friends ask me what makes a good room, I usually reply ‘comfort’. But this is not just about having a squidgy sofa or a place to lounge around: it is the result of all things being considered in decoration. I say all things considered because, in fact, all aspects of a room scheme and putting an interior together can go under the heading of comfort. To make a room fit for its purpose, it should be about the colour, the lighting, the proportion and the placing of furniture, as well as it being beautiful to look at and comfortable to sit in or sleep in.
When clients request that an interior be ‘cosy’, it doesn’t mean they want to live in a pub, but that they would like it to be harmonious. That is true whether it is a room in which it is easy to communicate with friends, or perfect for one or two people reading a book or watching television.
Comfort begins with what you are sitting on. Today, lots of people love big, old-fashioned and very soft Howard-style sofas. While I love them, too, I find that, when they are not being used, they can look a bit like an unmade bed, because the cushions always need puffing up. I prefer a cushion that is not 100 per cent down; it should be soft and comfortable, but more or less come back to its original position once you are no longer sitting on it. I like sofas that don’t have thick back cushions but a sprung back, with decorative cushions, which can bring extra colour to the room and are good to add or subtract to increase the comfort.
A sitting room should feel comfortable at all levels of capacity, though you tend to find that six people in a group is the maximum for a good chat. The usual layout is a large sofa and a couple of armchairs in a fixed position. I also like there to be a large ottoman. It is great as a perch, or to place lots of books and magazines on. Books invariably help to give atmosphere to the room – as do flowers.
I also like there to be some smaller chairs or side tables, which can be moved around easily when you want to add more people to the group or to create additional seating areas in the room. Importantly, occasional tables provide places to put a drink or a book. Extra chairs can, of course, be kept in a hall or somewhere else in the house to be brought into the sitting room when needed. In his schemes, the great interior designer David Hicks always had French-style chairs – both antique and modern – placed near fixed furniture for this very purpose.
Lighting is also vital. I favour downlights for paintings plus a central light fitting, which besides providing illumination is very good to anchor a room. All of these can be dimmed. Table lamps giving a soft yellow light and reading lamps placed next to armchairs and sofas make reading pleasurable for any age group.
When I look back at the work I did in my early career, I am now conscious that while using an antique Chinese daybed as a sofa looked very cool – and wonderful in photographs – it could only have acted as a perch rather than offering any sort of comfort. All of us want our rooms to have harmony in terms of colour and decoration. This is imperative to help us to relax, to feel unintimidated and to use the room in the manner it has been designed for.
I smiled the other day when I was reading David Mlinaric’s excellent 2008 book On Decorating. He recalls that when he was a student, his lecturer said to him, ‘In terms of interior decoration, a wastepaper basket is your friend.’ I so agree. How annoying is it to be in a room where there is nowhere to chuck any rubbish?
Most of us in the design business strive to be excellent at making a room look beautiful, harmonious, maybe fashionable, maybe even cool or even slightly old-fashioned – whatever the look you are going for. But none of it matters if the room itself does not work for the people who are going to use it. A harmonious, uplifting and beautiful interior is the sum total of all the parts that make up the word comfortable.
