If you’re sitting right now, chances are good you’re on your sofa. The most used seat in the house deserves some preemptive measures to keep it not only intact but fully presentable.
Photograph by Matthew Williams from our first book, Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home.
Remodelista founding editor, Julie Carlson, and CEO/publisher, Josh Groves, at home in Mill Valley, California, on a sheepskin-layered Catherine Memmi sofa.
1. Add Something Soft
Same sofa as above with a new ensemble of cushions and a Moroccan pom pom blanket, photographed by Leslie Williamson for the Apiece Apart feature on Julie and her daughter, Darcy.
The blanket is a discontinued designed from Twenty One Tonnes; find something similar at L’Aviva Home.
2. Tuck a Textile On Top
In his Brooklyn living room, artist Wayne Pate tucked a vintage floral fabric around the seat cushions of his white canvas sofa.
In her Edinburgh apartment, Nina Plummer of Ellei Home has a Le Grand Air Sofa with a loose slipcover that looks like the seat cushions were blanketed in a natural linen sheet.
Photograph by Nina Plummer.
In his New York apartment, creative director Matthew Axe folded a denim patchwork blanket—purchased at a Martha Stewart Living tag sale—atop his reupholstered Goodwill sofa.
Photograph by Eric Piasecki from Quiet, Please: A Stylish Apartment in Bustling Jackson Heights, Queens.
3. Layer the Cushions with Bed Rolls
Designer Corinne Gilbert tops the daybed in her Brooklyn workroom with homemade bedrolls made of linen and ticking.
Photograph by Matthew Williams.
Photograph by Nina Plummer.
In another corner of Nina Plummer’s Edinburgh living room: the classic OGK Safari Daybed cushioned with kapok-filled Safari Daybed Mattresses by Tensira.
Photograph by Matthew Williams for Remodelista.
Tensira Kapok Mattress Bedrolls from Goodee work well atop sofas and daybeds of many sorts, including these Ikea Utaker Stackable Beds in TBo architects Bretaigne Walliser and Thom Dalmas’s cabin. For our roster of bedrolls sources, go to 7 Favorites: Soft, Stylish Throwbeds.
In her shades-of-white bungalow in Pasadena, LA designer Michaela Scherrer pet-proofed the living room sofas with linen slipcovers layered with white leather blankets. The linen serves as protection from cat claws and the leather as a dog guard that’s easy to spot clean.
4. Cloak the Whole Sofa
A sheet-cloaked John Derian for Cisco Meadow Sofa greets visitors in the 1754 Maine Cape house that builder-designer Anthony Esteves restored for his mother: see The New New England.
Photograph by Greta Rybus
Photograph by Sarah Button.
Above:In a villa in the South of France designed in the late 1920s by Jacques Couëlle, interior designer and stylist Lauren Olivia unified a built-in banquette by covering its cushions in a linen sheet.
5. Patch as Needed
When your sofa fabric starts to give, consider adding some patches.
Photograph by Greta Rybus
Rather than recovering her cat’s favorite spot on the sofa, architect Maria Berman of Berman Horn Studio added patterned patches that lend visual interest.