I just spent approximately 4 hours walking through a furniture store looking at the same three corner sofas.
Why did it take 4 hours? Because technically it were twenty or thirty sofas, but they all looked so incredibly similar in design and "colour", they might as well have been three sofas.
Type 1: The "corner sofa" isn't an actual corner sofa with a backrest at two sides but one regular sofa with a built in ottoman. Yes, you get a thing resembling an L but it really just looks like someone tried to pull out the extra thing for a sleeping couch and stopped halfway.
Type 2: The corner sofa has a backrest at two sides but one side is still a built in ottoman. But at least it understood the assignment.
Type 3: The corner sofa has an ottoman on two sides and one of them or both have a small backrest suitable for sitting. It is only having a U shape instead of being a plain rectangle because they are huge af. Don't bother looking for a small sofa table for that though, the ottomans won't offer enough space for one.
They also all have an absurdly low backrest, but fret not, some have an extra headrest - build in or as an extra for an extra price. Others have big cushions you can rotate 45° and hope they are sturdy enough to make up for it.
There wasn't a single sofa, corner or otherwise, or even armchair, with an interesting pattern. One couch had two "colours", one on the top, one on the bottom, but the "colours" available were all gray. I would have been perfectly fine with the bottom combo being black, white or grey if the other half would have been red, purple or at least blue. But nope. Wasted potential.
One group of small leather sofas stood out as they looked like taken from an old vampire movie. They were amazing but sadly also small, not even a Type 1. Still mad respect for trying. (Yes, one of them had a small ottoman extension, of course.)
There were more colours among all the grey, beige, cream, more grey and black furniture than I expected, but half of them were shades of brown or darker beiges. Thing is, when you look them up online in their store, you see these colours are actually the only actual colour available next to half a dozen greys. I guess even the people in the store know this stuff is boring af and do their best to make the place look a bit more diverse, especially in the area with the newer and more expensive stuff.
So, of course you can order online instead, via that store or elsewhere, but guess what: Online only stores don't bother hiring extra drivers etc. they use regular local delivery services and they won't carry it into your appartment, unless you can book it as an extra but that doesn't seem to be a common extra.
You can also buy second hand, but you don't get it delivered anywhere, unless it's a store offering this as an extra, but that can cost a lot. Usually you drive to Average Joe with a car and hope your back won't snap in the process of getting it downstairs, into the car and upstairs later again.
A sofa is a thing adding a lot of quality of life to your place and quite an investment, especially in this economy. I saw price tags ranging from 750 € to 6000 €, the 750 € things being leftovers on sale, furniture that was on display etc. It's a disgrace you are bound to choose between basically dozens of the same three sofas that don't look particularly interesting in any way and maybe one rare outlier once in a blue moon.
And yet here we are, rotting away in a bland world because blandness is cheaper to design and produce, and if everyone does it, people have to buy this uninspired crap because there's nothing else left.
I hate everything about this "trend".
#Furniture #FurnitureDesign #Sofa #Couch #DesignFails #CapitalismSucks



