Soft Seating: So much More Than a Comfy Chair

With many of us becoming used to home comforts enjoyed from the shift towards hybrid working and the increase in working from home, an office space has had to become much more than a desk and a chair. Coupling this shift with the trend in open-plan layouts being popular in contemporary design practices, ‘zoning’ your workspace has become essential. Doing this with comfort and style is where soft seating comes into play.

What is ‘soft seating’?

Soft seating combines the comforts of furniture you would have at home with the flexibility and practicality of typical office furniture. The term describes a variety of soft and cushioned upholstered furniture items like armchairs, sofas, bean bags, and ottomans, making for an inviting and more relaxed seating experience. They have become a standard item of equipment as they can provide a dedicated place for employees to take breaks away from their desks and screens, physically zoning work and breaks. You could also use these spaces to hold informal meetings, collaborate with colleagues, or welcome clients and visitors; it is often used in reception areas and breakout rooms, as well as visually implying partitions, zoning your open-plan space without the need for walls.

Can soft seating look professional?

Soft seating is multifunctional in look, as well as use. It can be used to add artistic elements to your space, as well as being purely functional; manufacturers offer designs to fit your aesthetic sensibilities, whether that is classic, contemporary and minimalist, or modern and geometric.

How is it multifunctional and why do I need it?

Areas designed to be relaxing spaces help to stimulate creativity and generate ideas; physical and mental fatigue tends to set in if the environment around us remains static. By encouraging freedom of moving to work in different spaces throughout the day, rather than being restricted to our desks, our minds are less restricted, conducive to healthier and more creative problem-solving, which creates more opportunity to exchange ideas.

As well as providing a friendlier and more relaxed setting within the office, soft seating functions as a great sound dampener, crucial for productive working open-plan offices, which is, essentially, a single room where voices carry and can distract. Their acoustic performance is part of their design– their softer materials absorb sound waves and reduce echo, which improves sound quality where the sound is being made, and muffling it elsewhere, increasing the concentration levels of the whole room. With strategically placed pieces, you can use also soft seating to effectively soundproof areas for privacy. They can be moved around to best fit your needs, making it a far more flexible solution to maximise the usefulness of your office.

Often, these pieces incorporate storage solutions and integrated technology, too.