A sofa also known as a couch or settee in the United Kingdom is a tern used for a piece of furniture used for seating more than one person.
Sofas are usually kept in the living room or drawing room or in the lounge or personal library. Sofas will usually have an armrest on both sides and are upholstered in various textiles or in leather. A sofa was traditionally believed to be an adaptation of a bed or a day bed.
It is usually raised at one end and is almost always made comfortable by the use of foam or cotton wool. Ordinarily sofas are usually upholstered with textiles such as linen, coarse cotton or even synthetic textiles like rayon and nylon. However, the more expensive and plush ones are often upholstered in silk or even leather.
Leather gives the sofa a classy look and lends it an unusual charm. A sofa can essentially also mean a couch that is used in therapeutic clinics for making the patient feel at home and much more comfortable with the surroundings. Sofas have evolved differently for different purposes in different nations and have therefore have come to be known by several names. Sofas can be of various types depending on the number of people that they can seat. A loveseat is usually meant for two people as the name suggests whereas a settee for more than two people. There is the sectional sofa also which comes together when all its sections are joined.
The number of sections may wary from two to four and usually meet at an angle of 90 degrees or maybe slightly more than that. Others forms of sofas are divans which usually have a partial back support or may not have a back at all, the chaise lounge which is long and has one arm rest, the canapé which is decorative sofa that seats three and finally the ottoman which is in the form of a small foot stool.
Some sofas can also be used as beds in case of situations where there is a lack of space in the house. Such sofas are called day beds, sofa beds or futons. There are some sofas that have characteristic names like davenport or Chesterfield. The name Chesterfield was kept after the Earl of Chesterfield.
There is also the loaf bed which is a hybrid of the davenport and the futon and is a very comfortable and practical choice for those in need of a sofa bed
