Choosing a quick delivery sofa
Quick delivery armchairs have already been made, which turns the usual order of things around. Instead of choosing a cover and then waiting while the chair is built, you choose the chair itself. That puts the more interesting decision first, because once the fabric is settled on the upholstered designs, what separates one armchair from another is the frame beneath it and the seat on top.
Some of our armchair frames are meant to be seen. The Wycombe is solid oak throughout, spindled and woven with a paper rush seat, and it is the design that asks no fabric question of anyone. The Eliza sets its frame on turned oak legs, offered in Natural Oak or Darkened Oak. The Eva stands on square tapering oak legs with a line of pewter studs tracing the arm. Other designs give the frame away entirely: the Cleo floats above a hidden metal plinth on a 360-degree swivel, and the Long Island vanishes under a loose linen slipcover with a flowing skirt.
The seat is where the difference is felt rather than seen. The Cleo returns 48cm of seat depth, and the Long Island 70cm, and those 22cm are the distance between a chair you sit up in and one you settle into. Seat height does quieter work: the Wycombe sits at 41cm, and the Eliza at 50cm, and nine centimetres is the difference between dropping into a chair and stepping out of one. Footprint moves far less, so the chair that takes least from your room may not be the one you expect. The same designs run through our full armchairs collection.
What the frame is doing under the cover
An armchair that is already finished has been through the same workshop as one made to order. Each upholstered design begins as a kiln-dried tulipwood frame with traditional reinforced halving joints, upholstered by hand over a serpentine sprung seat. The Wycombe's solid oak frame and the Eliza's oak legs are protected with IsoGuard®, our penetrative timber treatment, which soaks into the grain instead of sitting on the surface as a lacquer does. The frames carry our lifetime guarantee, the same one that covers an armchair we make to order.
The cushions are worth knowing individually, because they are not the same chair to chair. The Long Island's back cushion is divided into pockets on the inside, so the filling cannot migrate to the corners and leave a hollow where you lean. The Cleo comes with a
matching scatter cushion filled with feather and down. The Eva's seat and back cushions lift out. Seat cushions across the upholstered designs are built on a foam core wrapped in feather and fibre, which takes longer to make and is why the seat gives a little and then holds rather than slowly going flat.
Ordering an armchair that is already upholstered
An armchair is rarely the first thing to arrive in a room. It tends to be the last, added to a sitting room that already has its sofa, or to a guest bedroom that needs somewhere to sit, which is why people often want one sooner than a made-to-order piece can come. What changes here is only the order of things. The cover has been decided, so the chair you see is the chair that arrives.
That makes seeing the fabric first worth more here, not less, because you are matching into a room you already live in rather than starting one. Fabric samples are free, and a linen reads
differently against your own daylight than it does on a screen. Returns fall in your favour too. Upholstery made to order is non-returnable, because it was built to a specification only you chose, and these chairs were not, so our standard 28-day returns policy applies to them instead. If the chair is not the only thing the room needs, our quick-delivery sofas work the same way.
