A Scandinavian sofa

December 15, 2020

by KRISTEN PHANG

We all adore the Scandinavian style: It’s simple, refreshing and chique.

It is the perfect design choice for the urban, modern lifestyle.

And just by purchasing a Scandinavian sofa, you have all the things you need to transform your home into this trendy Scandinavian style - and you can do it without renovating or buying additional furniture for your rooms.

Want to learn how? Let us show you 5 key features you must have in your Scandinavian sofa, and the 3 smart transformations you can use for 2021.

What Makes a Room Scandinavian?

When we recall the Scandinavian style, we often think of minimalistic designs, largely white walls, open spaces and a limited colour palette.

While these are recognisable features of the Scandinavian style, they are only a part of the trend.

To add Scandinavian elements into our living rooms, we must understand the concepts and principles behind its features.

Scandinavian homes are small; most of their houses are no larger than 75m2

But how do make their rooms look so spacious? Due to the limited space, Scandinavian designers view every bit of space as valuable and useful. Whenever a piece of furniture or furnishing is placed in a room, the item fulfils a specific purpose, or it serves multiple functions. For example: A Scandinavian sofa may have storage compartments to make full use of the empty space, or have pullout to double as a bed. As a result, plenty of room is freed up for people to roam around in a small space.

Even the pure white walls have a purpose.

Because Scandinavian countries, such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark, mostly experience winter months, they often don’t receive much sunlight during the day. To compensate for this lack of light, white walls are used to amplify the brightness of the room.

The functionality of the style naturally brings out the minimalist design we all love.

Most people often forget this element in the Scandinavian style, yet is one of the most important signatures of this trend. Since Scandinavians are experiencing cold seasons most of the year, they often don’t see a lot of greeneries around their area.

To bring life inside their daily lives, natural items such as large potted plants and wooden featuresare brought inside their homes. This adds a natural coziness to the room.

It also eco-friendly design feature that contributes a step towards a greener Earth.

Household Tip: You can also nuture white or pastel coloured flowers in your home; it adds a touch of delicate beauty in your home and is a creative diversion from the potted plants. Without nature, the white walls, clean surfaces and open spaces makes the room feel like an empty office environment.

This is also why the trend uses a whole variety of textures such as fur, porcelain, hemp and much more. It is natural to experience a wide range of textures in your environment; having a variety in textures removes the man-made construction behind the design.

A home should be place where you can cuddle in a blanket, watch the latest shows and sip a glass of wine after a long day at work.

Hence, the Scandinavian designs focuses on the comfort of the residents over design. Aside from the natural elements and open spaces, elements in a Scandinavian style are placed to bring a warm homely feeling.

For example, Scandinavian Sofas are often stuffed to the brim with plenty of throw pillows and fur throws for the coziness sitting experience. Lush rugs are also used to ease your sore feet.

Comfort also comes down to your visual experience as well.

Your mind takes a longer time to process more complicated designs and additional features. To relax the mind, the Scandinavian style strips down furnishing elements into its most simplistic design and uses the minimum amount of decorations needed.

Even with a few monochrome art pieces or a few geometric patterns scattered across the room, these design accents are the perfect touches needed to create an alluring interior.

This is also why muted colours or a monochrome colour scheme are used in a Scandinavian style. While bold bright colours induce excitement, whites, greys and pastels calms the minds and gives a soothing ambiance.

How to choose a Scandinavian sofa?

Sofas are always going to be the feature furniture in any living room.

Which is why choosing the perfect Scandinavian Sofa will give you the perfect base to start redesigning your home.

But the thing is: there is no prominent Scandinavian style in furniture.

This is because the Scandinavian style mainly uses Mid-century Movement (MCM) furniture as part of its interior design.

MCM furniture features clean lines, a large variety of materials and a priority on functionality over designs - they are characteristics that cross over with the Scandinavian style. In fact, a number of Scandinavian Interior designers influenced this movement!

By choosing an MCM sofa with the right features and colour palette, you can turn it into a Scandinavian Sofa. You can do this by looking out for these 5 features:

1) Wooden Features

While most sofas do not prominent show its wooden structures, Scandinavian sofas will have wooden-like textures as part of their design. This can either be an exposed sofa frame or a subtle design choice on the sofa’s legs.

Rich wooden frames are sturdy. So not only do wooden frames tie into the principle of nature but they also give you a sense of security.

2) Multipurpose

Remember: one of the core principles behind the Scandinavian style is functionality.

While you shop for a Scandinavian Sofa, look out for a sofa that has additional features such as or storage spaces, ottomans, L-shaped sofas or additional side tables - just like Sofa Erik.

Sofa Erik’s wooden beams can be used in many ways: they can be used as additional arm rests, platform for additional sides or even mini-tables for your cups of coffee or your phones. By choosing a sofa with multiple functions, you will further enchance your living experience and comfort of your home.

3) Simple Designs

MCM is an experimental design trend. Many MCM furniture will have unusual geometric shapes, curves and unique structural features.

However, this clashes with the simplicity of the Scandinavian Style.

While there is nothing wrong with choosing a Scandinavian sofa with curves and unique designs, it is best to get one with clean lines and the most minimalistic design. At most, it should have one or two unique features.

Sofa Boris is a good example of a simplistic yet unique design.

While it does not seem to stand out as much as Sofa Erik, its high backrest that surrounds people and compact design makes it unique enough to be a feature piece while sticking to the simplicity of the Scandinavian style.

4) Thick cushioning

Another amazing feature of Sofa Boris is its purposeful positioning of a variety of cushions, designed to give you maximum seating comfort.

Having plenty of stuffing in your sofa cushions is a fundamental element for a Scandinavian sofa. Your sofa is your go-to place for relaxation, so choose a firm, pillowy sofa that lets you sink into its soft embrace.

5) Muted Colours

Finally, you should choose a sofa that matches with the Scandinavian colour scheme.

The sofa colour can be white, peach, pastel pink, teal, azure ble, light greys and browns etc. so long as it is a base, muted colour you can build upon.

Household tip: if you do want a bold pop of colour, try a rich blue colour like royal blue or eccentric blue. It’s cool colour that blends with the white environment while giving off a mild brightness.

Usually with most sofas, there is a very limited colour scheme to choose from. At most, you have to choose between 2 - 3 standard colours that may not match with the Scandinavian style. There are some sofas that only come in one colour as well.

But at Acacia fabrics, you can choose from at least 6 - 7 different colours for your sofa.

We pride ourselves in being able to provide at least 30 different colour variation for each of our cloths, and we have selected the best Scandinavian colour choices for your sofa, such as harvest, limestone, dragonfly and many more.

To browse through our sofa fabric selection, you can check out our sofa calatougue here: Fibreguard Sofa Gallery

You can also look at our catalogue of fabrics here: Product

How to add in Scandinavian elements

Choosing the right Scandinavian Sofa sets you on the right path to transitioning your current interior design into this trendy, modern style.

However, adding a Scandinavian sofa to your home is half of the way there. Here are 3 simple transformations you can do design a Scandinavian-styled home.

Your Scandinavian sofa is the base of your whole design. Thanks to its muted colours and simple design, its easy to add decorative features on top of and around the sofa to accompany its minimalistic design.

You could add:

Thick fur rugs and throws
Geometric pillow covers (stripped or zig-zags work best)
A small wooden coffee table
Ceramic candle holders or cups
Tall floor lamps.

If you grow bored of this design after a few month, you can easily change the design by shifting, adding or removing accessories.

Household Tip: If you want to change the colour of your sofa, use a sofa cover to get a fresh new canvas to work with.

Unclutter your space

Open spaces are key to the Scandinavean style. After all, you need to make room for yourself!

To get open spaces, you need to remove all the unnecessary decorative items in the room.

Remember: the Scandinavian style is all about minimalism and function. Think of how your decorative item adds to the living space before adding it in and use the bare minimum of decorative items that you need.

If you have brightly coloured or complicated decorative items, it’s best put them away in your closet or set them in another room. You could also sell them off ecommerse websites like Shopee or Lazada to earn extra cash.

Household Tip: You should use large decorative pieces rather than a group of small decorative pieces. They leave a stronger impression and use the space more purposefully.

DIY Your Own Decorations

If you do need to add in additional accessories to your living room, you can easily create your own designs with items you have at home.

For example, you can use branches from your own backyard or black wire to create hooks for your keys and other small items.

Take the time to scroll through Pinterest to find geometric, nature-themed or recyclable accessories that you can make.

In this way, you’ll add in not only a touch of nature to your home, but are doing so in a ecofriendly way that you can be proud of!

Final Thoughts

So long as you remember the 3 principles of the Scandinavian style: functionality, natural and comfort, you will be able to restyle your home into this trendy style.

And all you really need is your interior design skills and a Scandinavian sofa.

Article Suggestion :

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