Textiles, cushions and comfort: Styling your sofa

Textiles, Cushions and Comfort: Styling Your Sofa

A well-styled sofa instantly adds a layer of cosiness. Discover how to style your sofa and add the finishing touches to your living room with Gabby's help.

Cushions are where practical and decorative can really meet. You want a mix of sizes, shapes, and patterns. Cushions can serve both a practical need and balance all the decorating ideas. It's important to work out the size of a cushion you want to use.

Tips for Arranging Cushions

I like to have some oversized cushions with a nice mix of heights for an overall look that feels quite relaxed. Mixing up the sizes really helps with that. A great place to start is buying a load of cushion pads before you even have the covers, buying a few sizes of each.

Buy Over Time

Nothing on my sofa was bought at once, everything was bought over time with little consideration as to what it was going to go with. You can sit with things that don't go together and then find something that magically pulls everything together.

Editing Your Cushions

Editing your cushions shouldn't be a big deal. The key is to know what cushions you've got and have an assortment of sizes. Once you know what the sizes are, it's always great to have spare cushion covers, and when you fancy a change, you can mix it up and find a different colour to create a different look for summer and winter.

Gabby's Cushion Covers

I have accumulated my cushions over quite a long period of time. Mixing something floral and figurative with things that are more softly graphic works well. A great tip for when you are getting cushions made is a different fabric on each side.

Bringing Life into a Room Through Textiles

Cushions are easy to dismiss as silly, but they make a room warm and inviting. You can really have fun with cushions using small amounts of fabric that you love - or even just pieces of fabric you don't use at all - to bring life into your room.

Design Notes: Sitting Room

The Poirot armchair was created by me for Arlo & Jacob's House & Garden range.

A vintage Indian kantha quilt is hung just above the sofa.

In response to a wall painting in a monastery in Ghent, Annie Millar painted a curtain on the fireplace.

Walls painted in 'Caddie' by Paint & Paper Library

Rattan trolley from Sika.

Painted lamp from Max Rollitt.

Bird cushion from Paul Smith

All About Cushion Sizes

Pillow Size Guide

Square cushion

• 60cm x 60cm (24in x 24in)
• 45cm x 45cm (18in x 18in)
• 40cm x 40cm (16in x 16in)
• 30cm x 30cm (12in x 12in)

Round cushion

• 60cm x 60cm (24in x 24in)
• 45cm x 45cm (18in x 18in)
• 30cm x 30cm (12in x 12in)

Lumbar cushion

• 30cm x 120cm (12in x 4ft)
• 15cm x 45cm (6in x 18in)

Rectangular cushion

• 45cm x 60cm (18in x 24in)
• 30cm x 50cm (12in x 20in)