by Anne Marie Hillan @lock.downhouse
Visit our West End interior stores, so many sofas, you’ll have to sit down!
If there’s ever a time of year when folk look at their living room and think ‘this could do with a wee refresh,’ it’s now. The light’s changing, the days are getting longer, and suddenly that sofa you’ve been living with for years starts to look a bit tired. A sofa is one of those bits of furniture that can totally change how a room feels. It’s where you collapse at the end of the day, where chats happen, where friends squeeze in, where kids sprawl, where the dog steals your spot (this happens to me often), and where cups of tea – or glasses of wine – magically appear.
Get the sofa wrong and the room just doesn’t quite work. Get it right and suddenly you’re looking around thinking, ‘Right… what else can I do in here?’ One good sofa has a habit of kick-starting a whole room refresh without you even planning it.
One of the things I love about the West End is how many great home and interiors shops we’ve got right on our doorstep. If you’re thinking about a new sofa, it’s so much nicer being able to wander in, sit down, and get a proper feel for things – rather than staring at a screen and hoping for the best. And of course, you can always be tempted by a few matching accessories too.
Take a Load Off
Two of my West End favourites for sofa-hunting are Basus and Sterling Home. Both are great places to browse, get inspired, and start picturing how a new sofa might actually live in your own home.
Basus on Hyndland Road is one of those shops you pop into ‘just for a quick look’ and then somehow lose half an hour and come out with things you didn’t even know you needed. The Basus showroom is deceptively big, with a large upstairs area that will absolutely surprise you. (There are a number of stairs though, so be warned.) The sofas in Basus are from Swyft Home. Swyft are The Sofa in a Box Company. Their sofas look amazing and will fit in any home – perfect for tenement flats and quirky conversions, and the team at Basus advise they can be assembled in five minutes with no tools. Now that’s impressive. And did I mention they look fabulous?
The three-seater sofa in teal is the Model 10 from Basus. There is a massive range of fabrics to choose from for all the Swyft sofa styles, and an entire range in the Model 10 style with armchairs, loveseats, and ottomans available, as well as varied sizes of sofa. Three-seater sofas are from £1,799 depending on the fabric chosen. I just love the Model 10 style. And there’s plenty of fabulous accessories – lighting, rugs, prints and cushions – in the Basus showroom.
The Swyft ranges in Basus are also available as sofa beds, which are ideal if your home needs to be flexible. The wonderful thing about these newer designs is that they don’t look like a compromise – they look like proper sofas first and just happen to turn into beds when you need them to. Perfect for guest rooms, smaller homes, or anyone who has friends and family staying over often. I have genuinely had my eye on this Model 04 sofa bed in vine for months. It’s a fabulous colour and it doesn’t look at all like a sofa bed. I will let you know when I get it – please notice the when, not if.
A Sterling Service
But of course, in the West End we are spoilt for choice. Sterling Home’s West End store is a great place to go when you want to see a massive range of sofa styles and get a feel for what suits you. The West End Sterling showroom is the newly rebranded Forrest Furnishing store on South Street.
Forrest Furnishing joined the Sterling Furniture Group in 2016, and the South Street rebranding now brings the showroom in line with Sterling’s other Scottish stores. The West End store has everything for the home, with beds, dining sets, living room furniture and other homeware, as well as sofas, spread across 50,000 square feet of retail space. It is a fantastic store for inspiration, with so many international brands. There is such a mix of sofa styles to browse – from cleaner, more modern shapes through to traditional styles. There are many well-known furniture names using luxurious, softer leather, with more relaxed sofas you can properly sink into.
What is great is being able to wander around and actually sit on so many different options. Some sofas look great but feel too upright for me. Others look lovely but you realise you want something deeper to curl up on. Being able to try a few styles side by side helps you work out what you really want to live with day to day. Sofa buying is very personal, and with me being only five foot and my lovely husband nearly a foot taller, I cannot stress how important it is that we actually sit on the sofa before we buy. This is not an online purchase!
How to Choose?
I love the Comet corner sofa at Sterling – it looks so comfortable. It also has deep seating and a modular design, offering fantastic flexibility – perfect for socialising or movie nights. And the mixed material gives it a fabulous textured look.
And the Revel sofa with the reclining options is just fabulous. It is available in both static and power recliner options. The idea of a power recliner sofa is so attractive to me.
With the size of the showroom, Sterling offers plenty of choice when it comes to size and layout – whether you’re looking for a generous family sofa, something more compact for a smaller room, or a corner sofa that can handle a house full of people. It’s the kind of place that helps you narrow things down from ‘I need a new sofa’ to ‘Right, I know the sort of sofa I actually want’.
And of course, once you’ve chosen your sofa, that’s when you get to have a bit of fun with it. Cushions can change the mood of a room in about five minutes. A throw makes everything feel softer and cosier. A rug underneath suddenly pulls the whole space together. Both Basus and Sterling Home are exciting places to get ideas for those finishing touches.
But remember, you don’t need to do everything in one go – homes evolve, tastes change, and that’s half the joy of it.
A sofa is not just something you buy because the old one is knackered. It is the bit of furniture you end up living on. It is where your day ends, where your friends land, where the chat happens, where you properly switch off.
So, if you’re going to invest in one thing for your living room this spring, make it the sofa. Take your time. Explore the options. Go and try all the sofas in our amazing West End stores. It’s worth taking the time and getting it right!
