2 Seater sofas

Choosing a small 2 seater sofa

Choosing a small two-seater sofa is usually treated as a question of width, and across our upholstered designs, width is not really the deciding factor. They run from 165cm on the Shoreditch to 175cm on the Long Island, Eliza, Eva and George, with the Olivia at 170cm: a hand's width between narrowest and widest.

Depth is where the choice really sits. The George is 92cm from front to back, the Olivia 105cm, and those 13 centimetres come straight out of the walkway in front of the sofa, which is the measurement a small room notices first.

The George was drawn that way deliberately. Its reduced depth makes it, in our own words, a considered choice for more compact layouts, and when our design team laid out an awkwardly shaped sitting
room for Stories, it was the slim lines of the George they used to hold the seating area together. It carries the lowest arms here at 57cm, so it can sit under a window without standing in front of it.

At the other end, the Olivia's 105cm depth and sweeping double-arched backrest buy a genuinely deep seat. In a small room, that is a trade rather than a mistake: give it the floor space, and it will be the only seating you need.

Between them, the Eliza and the Long Island are both 95cm deep and, with the Eliza loose cover, the lowest here at 82cm tall. The Eva stands at 95cm and is the most upright, better suited to a room
with height than one with a low ceiling. If the room will take more, the upholstered designs here are all made as three-seater sofas too.

How much of the footprint becomes seat

Two sofas can occupy the same 175cm of floor and hand back very different amounts of seat, which is the part small sofas are rarely measured on. The Eva turns its 175cm frame into 150cm of seat width. The Eliza, on the same 175cm, gives 125cm, because its exposed oak rail frame and 72cm arms take more of the width than the Eva's tailored, studded sides. 25 centimetres can be the difference between two people sitting comfortably and two people sitting politely.

Neither is better; it is a question of what you want the width to do. The Eliza spends it on the frame you can see. It was drawn to be looked at from every angle and to stand in the middle of a room rather than against a wall, which is often what a small room asks of it anyway. Its turned oak legs lift the piece clear of the floor, and a visible floor beneath a sofa is the cheapest way to make a room read larger.

The Shoreditch makes the opposite argument: the narrowest frame at 165cm still returns 139cm of seat, on square tapering oak legs and a streamlined silhouette that carries little visual weight for its size.

How our 2 seater sofas are made

Every upholstered sofa here begins as a kiln-dried tulipwood frame, with birch plywood alongside it on the Shoreditch, Eliza, Olivia and Eva. Traditional reinforced halving joints run through most of the range, with the Eliza using mortise-and-tenon joints from the rail to the legs instead. Serpentine springs carry the seat on most designs, and the George adds sinuous back springs behind them.

Seat cushions are built around a foam core and wrapped in feather, with fibre blended through on most designs, so the seat settles rather than flattens. The Eliza loose cover has its oak legs protected with IsoGuard®, our penetrative timber treatment. The frame and springs are guaranteed for life, with three years on the fabric and cushion inners.