How To Choose the Perfect Luxury Cushions for Your Sofa

How To Choose the Perfect Luxury Cushions for Your Sofa

A luxury sofa deserves luxury cushions – a whole, sumptuous, inviting heap of them. But, after investing so much thought into your sofa’s design and upholstery, finding cushions that are worthy of (effectively) concealing your sofa’s seat and back isn’t always a straightforward process.

Still, for most people, cushions are a necessity. Sofas often look incomplete – and certainly feel incomplete – without them. They’re handy for introducing a little contrast – for breaking up the pattern of your sofa’s upholster or, alternatively, for adding pattern and life to a plain sofa.

Here’s what you need to know about picking the perfect assortment of luxury cushions.

What is a ‘Luxury’ Fabric?

There is no exact definition of luxury. Luxury means different things to different people, but we can generally agree that luxury textiles are almost unanimously natural fibres – even if you’ve never thought about it that way before.

Consider the fact that, in general, you likely find yourself leaning toward the pure cottons, silks, linens, suedes, cashmeres, and leathers than you do the nylons, polyesters, and acrylics. They feel better against the skin and, while more expensive, also tend to last much, much longer than synthetics.

In a nutshell, natural fibres – even the heavier wools – tend to offer the same key properties:

Some fabrics, like crêpe and velvet, can be made from natural or synthetic textiles, so it’s worth keeping that in mind during any fabric shops.

For the most part, we recommend cotton and linen for upholstery and soft furnishings. These fabrics are soft and comfortable, versatile, and incredibly hard-wearing, provided you know how to look after them.

What is a ‘Luxury’ Stuffing?

Perhaps considered even less than the fabrics themselves, it’s only once you start shopping for cushions that you realise quite how significant a difference there is between one stuffing type and another.

Again, synthetic stuffing options are widely considered to be the inferior option for indoor soft furnishings. It’s a little different when the cushions are designed for outdoor use but, for the sofa, the bed, or anywhere else within your four walls, natural stuffing is best.

At Penny Morrison, many of our cushions feature a feather down stuffing, which is entirely natural and excellent for creating soft, comfortable, plump cushions that don’t ‘deflate’ or tamp down as soon as anyone leans against them.

Feather down is also softer than feather, which can feel a little ‘poky’ against the skin. You can read our full guide to feather down for more information on why this is the ideal cushion stuffing for the home.

Texture

Varying colours and prints add depth and dimension, but the best way to create a sofa for the senses is to introduce a few alternative textures into the mix. It’s a multi-sensory added touch that proves very effective on layered beds and sofas. 

How you do this is entirely down to you. Some people like to throw in a couple of velvets or silks for some variation, but we tend to fall in favour of the texture created by embroidery – those three-dimensional motifs are the ideal sensory garnish – or tassels and trims that offer a more definitive border to the edges of the cushions they’re placed on.

To a certain extent, print adds the illusion of texture. The ikat dyeing technique, for instance, creates those distinctively feathered, blurry edges within the design, and, from a distance, an additional sense of texture. You can see an example of this in our ikat stripe cushion.

Colour and Print

This brings us onto the most obvious design elements of all. In our opinion, one of the cornerstones of luxury is the prominence of hand-printed, hand-dyed, and hand-selected textiles that really exemplify the styles and cultures that inspired them.

The Turkish emphasis on embroidery, India’s incredible connection to print and pattern, or motifs from the ancient world – whatever you’re looking for, the benchmark of luxury is a true connection to the roots of the design.

At Penny Morrison, we are committed to exploring colour and print as it is used around the world, drawing inspiration directly from artisans who have inherited generations’ worth of skill and creativity. Our travels have given us a unique vantage point over the design process, and you can see it for yourself in our own collections.