How to Style Your Living Room with Striped Sofas
As we journey through 2025, more and more people are now looking to inject some personality into their homes. One simple way to achieve this is with a beautiful striped sofa in a vibrant colour. While neutral, plain sofas do still have their place, striped fabric sofas can help bring your living room to life and disguise the odd muddy footprint or biscuit crumb, too!
In this guide, our in-house Interior Designer, Tania, shares her living room styling tips for striped sofas using Vanessa’s timeless range of patterned fabrics, so you can create a living space that feels beautifully put together and completely your own.
Why choose a striped sofa for your living room?
Understated yet sophisticated, a striped sofa never goes out of fashion. Striped patterns have a unique way of feeling both familiar and fresh, meaning they suit both traditional country cottages and more modern homes. They also help to bring shape and a gentle rhythm to your room – vertical stripes lift a lower ceiling, while horizontal stripes make a smaller space feel bigger and more open.
So, if your living space is feeling a little dull and uninspiring, a striped sofa might be just what you need to make the room more visually interesting and welcoming.
Which striped pattern is right for you?
When choosing the perfect striped pattern for your living space, you need to consider who will be using the sofa most. Some striped designs, such as our Simple Ticking Stripe shown here, feature a generous amount of white within the pattern – but this might not be the most practical option if you have a busy household with children or pets. After all, there’s nothing worse than a grubby white-turned-brown sofa!
Stripes come in all shapes, colours, and sizes, so you need to think about what kind of look you wish to achieve. If you’re after something calming and gentle, our Stripe and Dash fabric is the perfect choice. However, for something a bit bolder and characterful, our Stockholm Stripe fabric in Teal, Tomato, and Winter makes a cheerful statement. It also pairs beautifully with natural woods and plain walls, too.
For further inspiration, browse our complete range of striped sofa fabrics.
Our top styling tips for striped fabric sofas
Here are a few of our favourite ways to style your striped sofa in your living room:
1) Place your sofa near natural light
When thinking about where to place your striped sofa, natural light should be at the forefront of your mind. A striped upholstery fabric looks so beautiful when it catches the sunlight! You could consider placing your striped sofa near a window in your living room, or featuring it as a central talking point in your open plan space.
2) Layer with cushions
Striped sofas provide the perfect canvas for layering with cushions. Grounding a striped sofa with a thoughtful mix of plain and patterned cushions creates a relaxed, lived-in elegance, as if the look has gently taken shape over the years. Our Plain Linen fabric cushions in Pigeon combined with some May Blossom cushions in Pigeon and Charcoal are a great example of this.
3) Play with texture
Drape a woollen blanket or handwoven throw over the back or arm of your sofa to help soften the straight lines of the stripe and bring in a sense of cosiness and warmth. These additions are not only easy on the eye, but they also encourage you to sink in and relax. For a more rustic look, opt for natural tones such as soft greys, muted blues, or earthy browns.
4) Repeat the stripe
Consider echoing the stripe pattern in other areas of the room to create a cohesive look. For example, you could choose a lampshade or simple roman blind in the same fabric stripes to subtly reinforce the theme. But make sure you introduce these repeated stripes with a light touch, so that the room feels harmonious and not overly matchy.
5) Mix in other patterned furniture pieces
When styling a striped sofa in a living room, we often introduce patterned armchairs or footstools to create a layered and contemporary look. You could choose a complementary fabric in a floral or check motif, such as Cow Parsley, Sunflower, or Dotty Check, to ensure the patterns work together without competing. As long as the colours are limited to two or three, combining different patterns and designs will make the room feel carefully curated rather than overly coordinated.
Read our dedicated blog post on decorating with stripes for further inspiration on how to bring this classic pattern into other parts of your home.
Need help styling your striped sofa?
Not sure where to start with styling your striped sofa? Don’t worry – our friendly team is always here to help!
With our free design consultation service, you can talk through your ideas with one of our experts, and we’ll help you choose the right fabric and style for your home. You can pop into our showroom in Cirencester, arrange a home visit in the Cotswolds, or book in a 30-minute virtual consultation. We can’t wait to help you create a one-of-a-kind living space that perfectly reflects your individual style!
We sell fabrics exclusively designed by Vanessa Arbuthnott, along side small, bespoke collection of Made to Measure items which includes curtains, blinds, sofas, footstools, chairs, headboards, and quilts, all handmade specially for you by master crafts people.
