Sometimes the right sofa simply doesn’t exist. The alcove is an odd width. The room needs a curve and everything in the shops is straight. The sofas you like are all twenty centimetres too deep, or the seat is too low, or the arms are wrong. That’s the point at which a sofa gets made to measure — built around your room and the way you sit, instead of the other way round.
It starts with measurements — including the doors
A custom build begins with the room, not the sofa. We work from the space the piece has to fill: the wall length, the depth you can spare without crowding the room, and where it sits in the traffic of daily life. Then the sitting itself: seat height and depth that suit your legs, a back angle that’s upright enough for reading or laid back enough for films, arm height where you actually rest an elbow.
Then comes the measurement everyone forgets: the route in. Door widths, corridor turns, the swing of a hallway corner, the inside dimensions of the lift in an apartment building. A beautiful sofa that can’t reach its room is a problem solved on paper, not on the landing — pieces can be designed to come apart and be assembled in place, but only if that’s planned from the start.
Frame, filling and fabric
The frame is built from kiln-dried hardwood, glued and dowelled, shaped to the design — straight, corner, or a true curve, which has to be formed in the frame itself and not faked with foam. On to that goes the suspension, springs and webbing matched to the size of the piece, then the filling: high-resilience foam in the firmness the seat needs, with a fibre or feather wrap if you want softness on the surface.
Fabric is where a custom piece earns its keep. You can choose on durability as well as looks — fabrics are tested for abrasion on the Martindale rub test, and the rating tells you honestly how a cloth will stand up to daily family use versus occasional use in a formal room. Natural fabrics breathe and age gracefully; performance fabrics shrug off spills and sunlight. Detailing is all decision, too: piping or a plain seam, deep buttoning, studs, the shape and finish of the legs.
Making and fitting
With the design agreed, the sofa is built by hand: frame cut and jointed, suspension fitted, foam shaped, fabric cut and sewn, then upholstered over the whole piece and finished underneath. Because every dimension is a choice, a custom-made sofa also lets you match or answer furniture you already own — a pair to an existing chair, a sofa that picks up the proportions of a period room — rather than hoping a showroom range happens to fit your life.
What decides the cost of a custom build is straightforward: the size and shape of the piece, the fabric chosen, and the amount of hand-detail in it. A large curved corner sofa in deep-buttoned leather is a different undertaking from a straight two-seater in linen — we’ll talk it through openly before anything is cut.
A made-to-measure sofa isn’t a standard sofa in a different fabric. Every dimension, from seat depth to arm height, is a decision made for one room and one household.
Sketching something?
Send photos of the room and your rough measurements through the contact form, and we’ll talk through what’s possible.
The bottom line
A custom sofa involves more decisions than buying off a showroom floor — measurements, access, frame, filling, fabric, detail. In return you get the sofa that actually fits: the room, the route in, and the people who sit on it.
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