The fear of making a mistake—one that sits prominently in the living room, taunting its owners—has pushed many sofa shoppers toward play-it-safe blandness. But there’s no denying that showy sectionals and roll-arm beauties wrapped in audacious florals, cheeky stripes, or bold colors steal all the likes.
Take the chintz sectional anchoring the open-plan living room of Kendall Jenner’s new mountain home, featured in AD’s January issue. It’s an enormous piece of furniture roughly the size (and price) of a small sports car. Jenner says she’s “very particular” about her couches and prefers them extra deep and “smushy”—so designing this one was a labor of love. “I want someone to walk into my house and not only love what my couch looks like, but also never want to get up and leave,” she says.
Pulling off a sofa of this size and ambition would test any designer, but AD100 talent Heidi Caillier—Jenner’s interior designer—was more than game. The project demanded some fifty yards of Lee Jofa’s Hollyhock chintz and a painstaking custom fabrication process. It’s the kind of undertaking that can feel daunting without Caillier’s assured hand (or budget), but when a room calls for a high-impact sofa, there is a method to the madness. Here, Caillier shares three pro tips to help you—and your clients—go big with confidence.
Channel that third-home-owner bravado
Jenner admits to having vacation-home decorating chutzpah when she chose this floral print, feeling freer to experiment with bold color knowing she wouldn’t be seeing it every single day. Commitment-phobia can make it hard to choose a pattern that will feel fresh for a decade—the typical lifespan of a sofa—but buyer’s remorse is rare, says Caillier. Her own taste leans toward classic, romantic florals from heritage textile houses that have stood the test of time.
Get as Goldilocks as you want
Be prepared to sit on a dozen sofas to get a feel for proportions and puff-factor. Narrow sofas promote a more upright posture; deeper ones are made for lounging. Down-filled cushions are softer but require significant fluffing; firmer fills offer support but less coziness. The down/down-alternative/latex/wool/feather/foam ratio is deeply personal, and few clients know what they like until they try it. For Jenner’s piece, Caillier’s upholsterer used soft high-resilience foam wrapped in high-quality down-alternative gel fibers.
Find a skilled (and flexible) upholsterer
Ready-made and semi-custom sofas from large retailers can be tempting, but the adage “you get what you pay for” rings especially true here. A custom upholsterer allows for precise dimensions, thoughtful details, and hands-on collaboration—often for not much more than a high-quality showroom piece.
After meticulous measurements, Caillier determined that a modern sectional shape paired with traditional chintz struck the cozy-meets-contemporary balance Jenner wanted. She had her workroom create a full mock-up in cotton muslin for a sit-test; the first version was too stiff and narrow, so the team expanded the frame to 42 inches deep and adjusted the fill. The extra step saved time, money, and frustration in the end.
The finished sofa was built from FSC-certified alder wood with an eight-way hand-tied suspension—a labor-intensive method in which each steel spring is knotted to the frame eight times. The result: a durable web of support and a long-lasting, luxuriously buoyant feel.
And it delivered everything Jenner wanted: style, smush, and staying power.
See the Heidi Caillier–designed sofa in Kendall Jenner’s Open Door:
