There are a lot of ways to design a sofa.
Deep and ridiculously comfortable.
Low and sculptural.
Button-tufted leather.
Curved bouclé.
Bright velvet.
Exposed walnut.
Something that looks as though it belongs in an English country house.
Something that looks as though it landed from Milan approximately twenty minutes ago.
Furniture designers have spent generations finding new ways to solve essentially the same problem:
Where should we sit?
Dogs solved that problem considerably faster.
Wherever you were planning to sit.
So rather than designing another collection of furniture specifically for dogs, we decided to give them access to the good stuff.
Twelve dogs.
Twelve very different sofas.
Twelve rooms where the furniture, architecture and art are every bit as important as the dog stretched across the cushions.
Because if you’re going to lose your favourite seat anyway, it might as well be a really good one.
The Low Modular
There is nothing particularly shy about this sofa.
Low to the ground, generously proportioned and upholstered in burnt orange, it arrives in the room like a piece of sculpture someone happens to have made comfortable.
Which makes the Whippet lying across it seem almost inevitable.
Long legs.
Long sofa.
Neither appears especially interested in getting up.
Behind them, an enormous painting of a running sighthound provides considerably more evidence of athletic ability than the dog currently does.
Some dogs look fast even when they’re doing absolutely nothing.
The Chesterfield
Some furniture improves when it gets a little older.
The leather softens.
The colour deepens.
The arms acquire the occasional mark.
The sofa stops looking like something that was delivered and starts looking like something that has always been there.
A Chesterfield deserves a dog with similar gravitas.
Preferably one who can occupy the middle cushion while looking as though the house, furniture and possibly several surrounding acres have belonged to his family for generations.
The fact that he was adopted three years ago is irrelevant.
Old money is mostly confidence.
The Curved Sofa
Not every sofa needs to face in a straight line.
A beautifully curved sofa changes the entire room around it.
The coffee table follows.
The rug responds.
People naturally turn toward one another.
And somewhere along that generous sweep of upholstery, a dog discovers that curves are particularly useful when selecting a place to sleep.
The artwork can be stranger here too.
Sculptural furniture seems to give the rest of the room permission to have a little fun.
Straight lines were never mandatory.
The Mid-Century Sofa
There is something wonderfully disciplined about a great mid-century sofa.
A slim exposed frame.
Beautiful wood.
Tailored cushions.
Nothing oversized.
Nothing unnecessary.
Which is why putting a Dachshund on one feels particularly appropriate.
Long.
Low.
Architecturally efficient.
The resemblance is difficult to ignore.
Some dogs were apparently designed during the same meeting.
The English Roll Arm
This is not a sofa that worries about looking perfect.
The cushions are deep.
The arms are soft.
There is probably a wool throw somewhere nearby.
Someone has left a book open.
And the dog has chosen the exact spot where a person was hoping to sit.
That’s part of the appeal.
A good English roll-arm sofa shouldn’t feel precious.
It should look better after years of people, dogs, naps, newspapers and Sunday afternoons.
Comfort is allowed to leave evidence.
The Tuxedo
Straight back.
High arms.
Clean geometry.
The tuxedo sofa has the architectural confidence of furniture that knows exactly where all of its edges are supposed to be.
Naturally, the dog ignores all of them.
He lies diagonally.
One leg hangs over the cushion.
His head is somewhere an interior designer probably didn’t intend.
And somehow the sofa still looks magnificent.
Good design can survive a dog.
The Little Settee
Not every great piece of upholstered furniture needs to dominate the room.
Sometimes the most interesting thing in the house is a small settee tucked beneath a window, beside a bookcase or at the end of a hallway.
Of course, scale becomes considerably funnier when the dog does not cooperate.
Put a very large dog on a very elegant little settee and suddenly both pieces become more interesting.
The dog believes he fits.
We see no reason to argue.
Furniture dimensions are apparently open to interpretation.
The Cloud Sofa
There are sofas designed to encourage good posture.
This isn’t one of them.
Deep cushions.
Soft upholstery.
Enough room to disappear for an afternoon.
The sort of sofa where sitting gradually becomes reclining and reclining eventually becomes cancelling whatever you had planned next.
Dogs understand this immediately.
No explanation required.
Finally, furniture designed around their existing lifestyle.
The Velvet Sofa
Sometimes beige isn’t the answer.
Sometimes the room needs emerald green.
Or cobalt.
Or mustard.
Or a spectacular red sofa that makes absolutely no attempt to disappear into the architecture.
Add a dog, dramatic artwork and a room with enough confidence to handle all three, and suddenly the sofa isn’t simply somewhere to sit.
It’s the reason the room works.
Neutral was never the only sophisticated option.
The Sculptural Sofa
At some point, furniture stops behaving like furniture and starts getting dangerously close to art.
The back bends unexpectedly.
The arms become part of the silhouette.
The base almost disappears.
You find yourself walking around it before you sit down.
The dog does not share this hesitation.
To him, an important piece of contemporary furniture is still fundamentally a large upholstered object someone has conveniently placed in the room.
Design criticism can wait until after the nap.
The 1970s Sofa
Low.
Deep.
Channelled.
Possibly brown.
Possibly orange.
Almost certainly better than you remember.
Some of the most interesting furniture being made today owes quite a lot to rooms people were sitting in fifty years ago.
The trick is bringing the idea forward without turning the house into a time capsule.
A great dog helps.
So does very good art.
Everything comes back eventually. Even the comfortable stuff.
The Sofa Nobody Expected
And then there should be one that doesn’t fit neatly into any category.
Maybe the proportions are strange.
Maybe the upholstery is a colour nobody sensible would have selected from a two-inch fabric swatch.
Maybe the back curves, the arms disappear and the whole thing looks more like landscape than furniture.
It’s the sofa someone walks past, stops, walks backward and looks at again.
Naturally, the dog has already claimed it.
Because dogs have never needed furniture to make sense before using it.
They only need it to be available.
Bonus: The Sofa That Matches the Dog
Black and white.
Sharp edges and soft cushions.
A little formal.
A little dramatic.
And sitting perfectly in the middle of it all is a Scottish Terrier who looks suspiciously as though the entire room may have been designed around him.
The sofa is particularly good.
A dark architectural frame wraps around soft cream upholstery, turning a relatively compact piece of furniture into something with real presence.
Then you look up.
The enormous painting takes the same small black dog and turns him into something monumental — rough, graphic and considerably larger than life.
The actual dog seems unimpressed.
He already has the sofa.
Sometimes matching the furniture is enough.
The Best Sofa in the House
There isn’t one.
That’s really the point.
A battered leather Chesterfield can be beautiful.
So can an enormous curved bouclé sectional.
So can a precise mid-century sofa, an unapologetically orange modular or a little settee that a Great Dane has completely misunderstood.
Great rooms don’t all look alike.
Great furniture doesn’t either.
And perhaps that’s what makes sofas such interesting pieces of design.
They solve the same basic problem in hundreds of completely different ways.
Then we bring them home.
Choose the perfect spot.
Arrange the room around them.
Add the rug.
Hang the art.
Fluff the cushions.
Stand back and admire everything.
And approximately thirty seconds later, the dog gets on.
Which is probably the highest compliment a sofa can receive.
