Style guides ·
Seating a small Kathmandu living room: seven decisions that make a room feel bigger
You cannot add square feet to a flat in Imadol. You can change seven furniture decisions that make the room read as larger.
One: raise the sofa off the floor
Of everything in this list, this is the one that changes a room most and costs nothing. A sofa on visible legs lets you see the floor continuing underneath it, and a floor that continues reads as a larger floor. A sofa with a skirt to the ground stops the eye and the room ends there. Splayed mid-century legs or slim tapered legs both work; the point is simply that light passes under the piece.
Two: lower the back
An 85 centimetre sofa back is a wall in the middle of a small room. A 72 to 78 centimetre back lets you see across the sofa to the window behind it, and that borrowed depth is worth more than the ten centimetres it costs you in head support. This is why the Scandinavian silhouette works so well in Nepali flats — not because it is fashionable, but because it is short.
Three: narrow the arms
A generous rolled arm can be twenty-five centimetres wide on each side. That is fifty centimetres of your room spent on padding rather than people. A slim tailored arm at ten centimetres gives you back thirty centimetres of usable seat within the same footprint, or lets you fit a 190 centimetre sofa where a 220 was planned. Armless pieces go further still and are worth considering for a second sofa.
Four: choose two chairs over a two-seater
This is the single best trick in a small Nepali living room. A 3+1+1 set seats five in less floor area than a 3+2+1, and the two single seats can be angled towards a conversation, pushed apart when guests arrive, or moved to a bedroom entirely. A two-seater has to stay where it was put for the life of the flat.
Five: be careful with the L-shape
L-shapes are sold as the space-saving choice and in a room under eleven feet on the short side they are usually the opposite, because the chaise reaches into the middle of the floor and cuts the walking path. In that room a five-seater flat against one wall gives almost the same seat count and leaves the floor whole. We turn away L-shape orders over this fairly regularly.
Six: keep the colour close to the wall
A sofa that contrasts sharply with the wall behind it draws a hard line across the room and announces exactly how much space it occupies. A sofa within a few shades of the wall dissolves into it. In small rooms, oatmeal, sand, warm grey and cream are working harder than they look. Save the bottle green and the rust for a room that can afford a statement.
Seven: measure the walking path, then tape it out
Before you order anything, put masking tape on your floor in the exact footprint of the sofa you are considering, including the chaise. Live with it for two days. Walk to the kitchen. Open the balcony door. Sit on a stool inside the tape and see whether the coffee table still fits in front of you.
It takes twenty minutes and it has saved several of our customers from a sofa they would have resented. If after two days the tape still feels right, send us the measurements on WhatsApp and we will build to them exactly — sizing to your room costs nothing extra with us.
— Written in the workshop. Questions to 9849239091 on WhatsApp.