You may have seen Sophie on the latest series of BBC One’s Interior Design Masters as a guest judge, or you might have heard her co-hosting the chart-topping podcast The Great Indoors.
Now, Sophie has teamed up with DFS to create a capsule collection of sofas, armchairs, footstools and scatter cushions in her signature style of bright hues and bold patterns, with the aim of encouraging us to dial up the dopamine in our decor and make our homes all the happier for it.
In-between her busy diary of launch events, expert talks and her own design workshops, we were excited to chat to Sophie about the new range, and ask her tips for adding maximum colour with minimal fuss – and which hues to avoid at all costs.
We love your collab with DFS! Tell us a bit about the collection…
The main inspiration was to bring a collection of colours, fabrics and patterns together so people could feel confident to use colour in their home. So I put together a palette, which is all my sort of bright, joyful, positive, saturated colours, but they’re also quite warm so they work really well with both period and contemporary homes.
You can mix and match knowing that the colour story is coherent across the collection and create something that’s quite individual. I think the idea of the matching three-piece suite is pretty dead and buried and people want to be more experimental with their decor, especially people who like to use colour and pattern.
My wish is that people will be able to really explore their personal pattern style.
Which are some of your favourite pieces?
It’s really hard because I designed my ideal capsule collection and I love it all! What I’m really excited about is to see what other people do with it. We created room sets for the photoshoot to give you an idea of how I’d put things together, incorporating bold wallpaper and rugs, and different colour schemes.
I’m excited to see what colours are selling and what people are going for. I’m hoping to hear that it isn’t only the beige! Because yes, you can have beige – well, we’re calling it ‘Biscuit’ – so it’s a Sophie Robinson sofa for people who want something more neutral but then you’d add the pattern with the cushions.
I’ve actually had a couple of pieces delivered to my home and the Pashley accent chair comes in the bold red and pink Deck Chair stripe and it’s the most fabulous armchair I’ve ever seen.
You’re known for your love and use of colour. Why is having a colourful home important?
Colour impacts our emotions; people have an emotional reaction to colour. We’ve been going through a period of people not connecting to their interior spaces, and people really want to now. I think the pandemic has a lot to do with that. People being in their homes longer than they’ve ever been made us really consider how our homes make us feel, and colour really delivers that.
So when you’re looking for a sofa or a paint palette, you need to get in touch with how that colour makes you feel. Does it make you feel happy and bright and sunny and positive? Or does it drain the life out of you? It’s definitely not a one size fits all – that’s why there are so many colours and patterns in this range. It’s an opportunity to explore your relationship with colour because home is our safe space, our haven, and this is a place we retreat to.
We should be surrounded by the things we love and the colours that make us feel our best.
What are your colour trend predictions?
I think that working out what our own relationship to colour is, is actually more important – especially when you’re making a big investment like a sofa. DFS found that people typically keep their sofas for seven years so it’s quite a considered investment choice.
In terms of general trends, we’re going to see more colour: it’s continuing to be really popular. We’ve got an Aqua colourway in the sofa which I think is going to be quite big. I’m seeing lots of lilac and lavender tones, maybe replacing the pink eventually.
What’s the easiest way to add colour to a rental, and to a new-build property?
Get the colour on the walls with the paint – that’s the fastest, most affordable, most transformational way to get colour into your space. But then it does bring me on to the sofa as it’s a really big piece of furniture, and I think because of that a lot of people default to a neutral. If you’re renting or starting out in a new build, this is a really great time to start investing in your look and style.
Choose the bold colour for the large piece of furniture that’s going to give you so much more visual bang for your buck. Or if it’s not the sofa, maybe it’s an accent armchair or a footstool on a colourful rug. I think the big elements make the most visual impact – sofa, rugs, artwork, paint – so you can create a massive transformation quickly.
The other thing that’s important is to understand that it takes time to build your look. We live in such a fast-paced social media world where everybody looks like they’ve decorated their house over a weekend.
The reality is that I’ve been in my home eight years, and I’ve just about got it how I want. But get your look and your colour palette tapped from the get-go and then layer up, knowing that every purchase or every decision builds on this. You want to make a big splash, but remember that doing up a home is like a journey, rather than a destination.
"Beware of pure brilliant white and pure black – be very, very afraid of those two colours because they can create real discord and disharmony very easily."
What are your top tips for mixing colours? Can you make mistakes with it?
Oh no, people can make mistakes – I wouldn’t have a job if it was that easy! You can build up quite complex colour palettes, which could be four, five, six, seven, eight different colours, and those are the ones that trip people up.
I suggest that you take a hero print – it could be a piece of artwork, a cushion, a fabric swatch, a wallpaper – which will have a complex colour palette within it. Often you can use that to draw out your paint colour, your sofa colour, your flooring colour, because you know that palette works really well together as the designer, who’s an expert of colour, put that palette together.
And beware of pure brilliant white and pure black – be very, very afraid of those two colours because they can create real discord and disharmony very easily. Pure brilliant white is such a hard and chemical colour. And pure black is also very cold and quite often, in this part of the world, we want to create warm and cosy colour schemes.
Those are the two colours, or non-colours, that I personally never use in any of my schemes and I would also tell people to be really wary of them. So instead, go for an off-white or a graphite grey.
You’ve recently been on our screens as a guest judge on BBC One’s Interior Design Masters series 5 – what’s it like judging other people?
It’s brilliant, I love judging other peoples’ designs as I don’t have to do any of the work! It’s the dream job, isn’t it? I wholeheartedly take my hat off to the designers. They look like they work hard on the telly but they work 100 times harder in real life.
It’s such a quick turnaround: they have to get the ideas, they have to source the items, they have to get it all ready to go up, they have to keep stopping to be filmed.
I think the designers who work on the show are amazing. They really pull together and support one another, which is such a heartwarming thing.
Finally, we often see your pet dog on your socials – should dogs be allowed on the sofa?!
Yes, they should! She’s so spoilt that she’s allowed on the sofas and therefore anything that’s in my house has to be really durable, hardwearing and practical. I’m not precious. I love my home and I love that it looks lovely, but I also want it to be a home that people live in and feel relaxed in. And I wouldn’t give up my sofa cuddles with my dog of an evening for anything – it’s the best part of the day!
Shop the DFS x Sophie Robinson sofa collection in selected stores and online at dfs.co.uk. Keep up to date with Sophie at @sophierobinsoninteriors on Instagram.
