I’ve been shopping for the perfectly deep sofa for over 20 years.
It started right out of college, when I floated into ABC Carpet & Home in the Flatiron District, the epicenter of Rich Bohemia, and begged them to hire me for a job. Any job. Why? Because I was desperate for an employee discount. It was time for my first grown-up couch.
I got a job, but even with the discount, I couldn’t afford their furniture. Still, I gained some invaluable life experiences there. When Sex and the City filmed in the bedroom section, I held Sarah Jessica Parker’s hand while she was secretly pregnant and privately puking. I helped a shopped-out Kevin Bacon find an emergency cappuccino. (He warmly smiled, “I’m Kevin, by the way.”) I styled photoshoots with Deepak Chopra, Naomi Campbell, Uma Thurman, and all the Queer Eyes. By osmosis, and certainly not salary, I became a bona fide design snob.
The ABC employees were a society of extreme eccentrics and beautiful weirdos, and we would often kill the days by hanging around the sumptuous sofa section — a play land of jewel-toned velvets and luxe chrome legs. When 9/11 happened, I buried my head in those sofas and sobbed. When celebrities engaged in outrageous shopping sprees (Kate Hudson), we’d gather there to gossip. The couches were so evocative — and most memorably, they were so deep! I promised myself that, someday, I’d own a deep, velvety, well-made sofa of my own.
Twenty years later, the original ABC is shuttered, and I am a single-mom-by-choice, a writer who lives paycheck to paycheck, and a woman with a NOT-DEEP-AT-ALL joyless Joybird. When my recent book, This Might Be Too Personal, garnered a modest TV-development deal, I told myself that, finally, the deep moody couch of my dreams would be my reward.
So I started shopping. I went to Room & Board because it’s known for its customer service, and I always need a lot of that. I asked for the deepest sofa. A salesperson led me to their popular Metro. It was 43 inches deep. I comfortably sank into it but didn’t feel any spiritual connection. Plus, too bulky. A handsome banker type plopped next to me and we agreed that this was the right couch if you had an enormous living room in Amagansett and a bunch of private-school kids on iPads, which I do not (and he did!).
I subwayed down to Industry City, where I knew they’d have many options, as well as a new iteration of ABC Carpet & Home. On the way there, I texted my friend Julie who works at Domino. What’s your favorite deep sofa RN? She wrote back, “If we’re being aspirational, it’s the Float Sofa by Sarah Ellison at Design Within Reach … the dark chocolate brown is the chicest IMHO.”
So, I went straight to the DWR outlet. I had no idea what the Float was, or that it cost around $9,000. However, none of that was an issue, because the salesperson looked at me deadpan and said: “No one sends something like the Float back. It’s not something you’d see at the outlet.” Just for fun, I asked her about the dimensions and she said it’s 50 inches deep. Damn girl. That’s over half my living room!
Next I went to the RH (née Restoration Hardware) outlet. I heard they were practically giving furniture away there. I asked to see all “the Clouds.” Time to see what the fuss was all about. They only had a few, and they were all in the “Luxe” size, which meant 45 inches deep. The cushions completely swallowed me up; they also made me want to nap. Like, forever. All to say: super-chill but … who needs to be that chill? I have shit to do!
I stopped by the ABC outlet, which has a much smaller inventory, but the same magical energy as the original. The iconic Cobble Hill sofas that I saw there — those whimsical, velvety, nostalgic ABC pieces that defined my early twenties — measured at, womp womp, 38 inches deep. Though I loved the narrative of a full-circle moment, and was legitimately salivating for a rosewood-pink beauty that screamed Jenna Lyons’s living room, the dimensions were just too narrow. ABC had other luxurious sofa collections too, and some were actually perfect size, but nothing had that je ne sais quoi. (To complicate my feelings, floor samples were less than $2,500 that day!)
A stylish customer at ABC suggested I check out Burrow’s Mambo sofa, “affordable but insanely cool” which got me very excited, and so I ran home to investigate the details. It was low, groovy, curvy and gives playful, kid-friendly vibes but it’s also not that deep. Thirty-seven inches across. Just one inch more than my bummer Joybird. Because the Mambo is modular, I tried various configurations with ottomans (26 inches deep) to add some real estate, but ultimately I had to accept it would not work.
The next day, a bit deflated by couch culture, I pinged Julie for more ideas, this time specifying that the sofa had to be under $4,000 and not the size of a honeymoon Jacuzzi. She responded, “Sundays’ Movie Night sofa. It’s fantastic.” I had never heard of Sundays, so I did a deep dive on the brand. Their reviews were excellent (like, no haters?) and the customer service rep was a pleasure. But, as I discovered at many of these stores, the only options for the Movie Night Sofa depth were “Standard” ( 37 inches) or “Large” (45 inches). I pivoted to the beautiful Good Company Sofa, in a seductive shade of Cashew, but with a 41.5 depth, my gut said it would feel too dominating. Plus, I’m just too scared to buy a couch that my body has never descended upon, no matter how stellar the reviews.
I concluded that I needed something in the middle, a 40-inch-deep couch. That was the sweet spot. Deep enough to blissfully watch The Traitors after a long stressful day of deadlines and parenting, but not so deep that I never left my apartment again. But where the hell was it? I started losing sleep over the hunt. I started feeling resentful toward friends with money who could just order something off Jenni Kayne without making calculations like, “What’s more important, a Fuck-You Couch or summer camp for my kids?”
As an act of restoration (not hardware), I took my kids to my sister’s new house in Connecticut. As soon as I saw her sophisticated yet hearty couches, deep but not psychotically so, I gasped: WHERE ARE YOUR COUCHES FROM AND HOW DEEP ARE THEY? Turns out they were from the Pierson collection at Room & Board and — bless — 40 inches deep. I must have been too immobilized by the bulky Metro sofa to notice them when I was last there. After a happy weekend of reading, gossiping, and cuddling on her Piersons, I knew I’d found it.
The next week, I went back to Room & Board. I studied the Pierson on display, triple-checking that it was exactly 40 inches deep. I covered it with a lived-in, velvety, teal fabric called Vance Bali that transported me right back to boho-chic ABC Carpet & Home. The whole thing, plus tax and delivery, would cost a sobering $3,900. However, the woman I dreamed I would be someday would own this couch — and I had to eventually stop shopping and get back to work — and so, I purchased the pretty thing with decisiveness and glee.
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