A 21-Gun Salute to the Patterned Sofa

The patterned sofa, once a mainstay of 20th century home decor, seems these days about as common as a land-line telephone or a TV screen that isn’t flat. They’re still around, certainly, but…

If you read BoHo Home regularly, you know I’ve owned a charcoal-gray sofa for five years, and I’ve even lauded its versatility in blog posts. But before that, for 25 years, I owned patterned sofas—two, one of them upholstered twice, both times in, you guessed it, patterned fabric. I wanted a change this time around, but I might find my way back. (I certainly don’t intend to let my solid-color sofa limit the pattern potential of my living room in the meantime.)

Interesting to me is that most of the 21 patterned sofas I found for this post are in rooms designed by professionals, and several are from the homes of interior designers. That tells me a patterned sofa still says custom, at least to a certain segment of the population. And the above room designed by Philip Gorrivan, with its leafy print sofa, is a case in point.

Notice that the large-scale botanical on the sofa is mixed with another large-scale print—a flower—for pillows, a diamond-patterned sisal rug, zebra-print stools, and a gallery wall and book table arrangement that call to mind patchwork quilts. It follows some of the guidelines for mixing pattern and colors, but it breaks some of those rules, too.

And yet, to my eye, it all works. Really, REALLY well.

The same is true of the 20 rooms that follow. Big risks? Maybe. But big rewards, too. See for yourself…

 

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