A Harrison West Design Journal post by Kevin Harrison
You sit on a sofa for two minutes in the showroom. It feels great. You pick the fabric, sign the order, and three weeks later it arrives at your house. Then you actually live with it. Two hours into the first evening, your back hurts, your legs feel off, and you start wondering why you spent that much money on something that doesn’t feel right.
Here is the part nobody tells you. With a few measurements taken before you bought it, that same sofa probably could have fit you perfectly for the next ten years.
Comfort Gets Harder As We Get Older
Your body recovers from a long day differently at 55 than it did at 25. The chair that looked comfortable enough in your twenties is the chair that wakes you up stiff in your fifties. When you sit down at the end of the day you want to feel restored, not punished. That takes planning.
Furniture should look right in your room. It should also support your body well enough that two hours of reading or watching TV leaves you feeling better than when you started. A lot of furniture handles the first part well and misses on the second.
The Two Numbers That Matter Most
Seat height and seat depth do most of the work.
When you sit on a sofa or chair, your feet should rest flat on the floor. Not hovering. Not perched on tiptoe. Flat. And your back should make full contact with the back cushion, with no gap that a throw pillow has to fill. If you are using a throw pillow as structural support, the furniture is wrong for your body, and you will never quite settle into it.
Get those two measurements right, and most of the comfort problem goes away.
What We Learned From Stressless
We have been a Stressless dealer for years, and one of the things we have learned from them is that there are 13 distinct ergonomic body types. Two people who are both 5’10” can have completely different proportions. One has a long torso and shorter legs. The other has long legs and a shorter torso. They need different chairs, even though they wear the same size shirt.
So when we fit you to custom furniture, we measure three things:
- Floor to knee
- Knee to hip
- Floor to the center of your eyes
Those numbers tell us what seat height, seat depth, and (for a recliner) headrest position will actually fit your frame. We have taken what Stressless does inside their recliner program and applied the same thinking to the rest of our custom furniture.
Two People, One Sofa
What if you and your partner have very different builds? This comes up constantly, and it is solvable.
Most couples end up sitting in the same spots on the sofa every evening. Once we know which side is which, we can adjust each side independently. A little more filling in one back cushion, a little less in the other. A small change in leg height across the frame. The result is a sofa that fits both of you. When nobody is sitting on it, you cannot see any of these adjustments.
Recliners Add One More Number
If you are buying a recliner, the back height matters too.
Run your hand up the back of your skull. There is a small ridge that sits roughly behind the middle of your eyes, more or less in line with the tops of your ears. That ridge is where the top of your recliner needs to be.
If the chair is taller than that, your head gets pushed forward. Your neck has no real support, and you cannot relax into the chair. If the headrest sits just below that ridge, your head and neck are properly supported, and you can actually fall asleep in the chair without paying for it the next morning.
The Fitting Is the Whole Point
Choosing fabric, picking the leg style, deciding on arm shape: that is the fun part of buying furniture. None of it matters much if the underlying piece does not fit your body.
A fitting takes a few extra minutes at the time of purchase. It is the difference between a sofa you tolerate and one you actually want to sit in.
If you are shopping for new furniture, come in for a fitting before you order. Bring your partner if you share the sofa. We will take the measurements, walk through the options, and make sure what shows up at your house is built for you, not just for the showroom.
Stop in for a furniture fitting at any Harrison West location: Clarkston, Midland, or Grandville. Our sister store, ScandiComfort in Rochester Hills, also offers fittings.