A sofa is often the chief culprit, since it is usually the largest piece of furniture in the room and the costliest to replace. That’s why designers recommend going with a neutral sofa color and adding accent colors with pillows or other accessories that are inexpensive and easily changed.
But neutral has a broad definition—it can range from white to sage to chocolate brown. “A neutral, to me, could be anything that works within that palette that is not going to pull focus,” says Los Angeles interior designer Jeff Andrews. “The sofa shouldn’t be the featured element of the room; the room needs to be the featured element of the room.”
How do you choose which sofa color is right for your space? “Take an inventory of what you have in the room that you’re going to be keeping,” says Seattle interior designer Amely Wurmbrand. If you’re married to the wall color, choose a sofa color to complement it. Love the carpet, or the fabric on your easy chair? Choose a sofa color that goes along with it.
These decisions can also be financial: If it’s too costly to replace an item, or if you’re renting and can’t change that feature, use that as a starting point. But don’t base the sofa color on a wall color you’re indifferent about, because it’s a lot cheaper to re-paint the wall than to re-cover the sofa.
Your goal shouldn’t be to match everything in the room, but to look for colors that are complementary. “I wouldn’t necessarily match the sofa exactly to the wall color, but I would definitely keep it in the same family,” says Andrews. “In a perfect world, I would make it either two shades darker or even two shades lighter than what your wall is.”
But if your walls are orange or chartreuse, you might want to think twice about this approach. “Be careful of popular colors of the time,” advises Seattle interior designer Nia Collins. “It’s not that you shouldn’t indulge yourself, but if you don’t want to replace your furniture in eight years … .”
Several designers we spoke to favor dark sofas, because they help ground a room and also hide soil and stains. If you go with a white or pale sofa, and don’t want to police every person who sits on it, try finding one with washable slipcovers, or upholstery that can be easily removed for dry cleaning.
When shopping for a sofa, Collins recommends bringing swatches of the colors in the room, along with a floor plan and even photos of the space. If you see something you like, ask the merchant if you can borrow a cushion, matching throw pillow or fabric swatch, so you can see how the color looks in your room and under various lighting conditions.
And don’t overlook the role that texture can play. A nubby fabric may look different under various lighting conditions than a flat fabric in the same hue. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “I like something with a bit of texture to it; it wears better if you have kids or animals,” says Andrews. And a weave that incorporates threads of different colors will generally coordinate with a broader range of hues, and will have greater depth and interest.
