Most rooms are furnished from standard models, and that is often the right starting point. What makes a room feel personal is usually a handful of adjusted details: a sofa that fits its wall exactly, a leather colour chosen in the room's own light, pieces that share a finish, and storage that lines up with the architecture so it looks built in.
At Sitdesign every piece is handmade in our own factory in Büyükçekmece, Istanbul, and most of the adjustments below are made to one of our standard models rather than designed from scratch.
Start with the room, not the catalogue
Before choosing models, measure and note:
- Wall lengths between corners, doors and windows, not just the overall room size.
- Niches and recesses: width, depth and height, plus any skirting board or radiator that reduces the usable depth.
- Window sill heights, if a sofa or sideboard will stand beneath a window.
- Fixed elements such as a fireplace, sockets, a TV point or a column.
A photo of each wall with the measurements written on it is often more useful than a floor plan alone. It shows what decides a custom size: where the light falls, where a door swings and what you see first when you enter.
Custom sizes: what to change and what to keep
Custom dimensions are available on request, but not every dimension changes a piece in the same way.
- Width is the simplest to adjust. A common rule for a sofa in a niche is to leave roughly 10–15 cm on each side, so it looks placed rather than squeezed in.
- Seat depth changes how you sit. Typical seat depths run from about 55 cm for upright seating to 65 cm or more for lounging.
- Seat height is usually around 42–46 cm. It affects how easily people stand up, so change it only for a clear reason, such as very tall or older users.
- Back height matters under windows: a back that stays a few centimetres below the sill keeps the window line clean.
When you change the width, keep the arm and leg proportions of the original model. A sofa lengthened by 40 cm with the same arms usually still looks right; one that is shortened a lot can look heavy if the arms stay wide. The construction stays the same either way: a kiln-dried beech frame and high-resilience (HR) foam over sprung seating.
Leather colour as a deliberate choice
Colour is the most visible bespoke detail and the easiest to get wrong on a screen. We work with genuine leather only, in 76 colours across 12 colour families, and Italian leathers form our top leather group. A few practical points:
- Look at samples in the room itself, in daylight and again in the evening under your own lamps. The same brown can look warm in the afternoon and almost grey under cool LED light.
- Hold the sample next to the floor, the curtains and any wood in the room, not against a white wall.
- Decide whether the leather should blend in or be the room's one strong accent. A sofa in a neutral leather with two armchairs in a deeper tone is a common and easy balance.
Leather samples are sent on request, and you can compare shapes in our leather sofas collection. If a piece should be in fabric instead, fabric upholstery is possible and customer's own material (COM) is accepted.
Matching pieces without a showroom look
Matching everything can make a room look like a catalogue page; a calmer approach is to repeat one or two elements and vary the rest:
- Repeat the leather colour across the sofa and armchairs, but let the armchairs have a different shape.
- Repeat the wood or leg finish across the sofa, coffee table and sideboard.
- Repeat a line: similar top heights for a sideboard and a console in the same room.
A model family makes this simpler. The Ordinate range, for example, includes the Ordinate sofa and the Ordinate sideboard, so one design language can run through a living and dining area. For carrying a material or colour from one room into the next, see how to create a sense of continuity between rooms.
A built-in feel from freestanding furniture
Freestanding pieces can look fitted if you follow a few alignment rules:
- Fill the wall on purpose. A TV unit or sideboard that covers about two-thirds of a wall looks intentional. In a recess, keep the gaps on both sides small and equal.
- Line up the tops. Where you can, match the height of a TV unit to a fireplace hearth, a window sill or another strong horizontal line.
- Keep depths consistent. Pieces along one wall look built in when their fronts sit on the same line.
- Close most of the storage and leave only a small part open for books and objects.
A model such as the Compasso TV unit & bookshelf can be the starting point for a media wall of this kind. A fireplace wall with the TV above it and leather armchairs on either side is a typical example of the approach; you can see a related setting in the Folkart Nefes villa in Büyükçekmece, one of the projects we worked on.
Planning the order and the timing
For an accurate quote, send us:
- The model names you are considering, or a photo of the look you want.
- The measurements and wall photos described above.
- Your leather or fabric direction, even if it is only "warm brown" or "light grey" at this stage.
Our lead times are 3–4 weeks for upholstered pieces and 6–8 weeks for wood pieces. If a room includes both, plan around the wood timeline so everything can be placed in one go.
If you are planning a room with a few bespoke details, contact us with your measurements and photos. We will send leather samples and prepare a quote for the pieces you have in mind.
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