Should You Buy a Sundays Sofa?
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It took three trips to the Sundays showroom in Manhattan to make up my mind about the brand. The Canadian DTC furniture company makes a line of minimalist but unfussy sofas upholstered in performance fabrics — the best-known is the “Movie Night,” a pillowy modular sofa marketed to families — plus a small collection of tables, chairs, and beds with the soft-edged, vaguely Scandinavian aesthetic that has wooed upwardly mobile millennials. The prices are medium-high, the branding is cool but approachable, the showroom is tastefully decorated with Zeitgeisty lamps and artfully framed prints.
Still, I always leave Sundays scratching my head. It happened the first time I tested out theMovie Night sofa— it looked so appealing in photos online, like a pile of pillows. But in person, it was oddly large, like a normal sofa scaled up 1.5 times, and surprisingly firm once you nestled into its thick cushions. The brand’s Get Together Sofa has comfier seats, but it doesn’t stand up tosofasfrom more established brands likeCrate & BarrelorRoom & Boardwith similar specs that cost less and look better up close.(Sundays does offer free white-glove delivery, which is a good perk.)
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The basement houses a “pop-up” from Hetta, Sundays’ sister brand, which is subtly quirkier. (Per the brand, Hetta’s pieces are “grounded in tradition” and “defined by their craftsmanship, high-quality materials, and sense of warmth.”) It’s similarly full of intriguing ideas thatalmostwork but need more time to cook. Asofawith a fold-up/fold-down back is a clever way to sidestep the debate between high-backed versus low-backed sofas. But the understuffed velvet cushions look rumpled, even in the showroom, and the seats are so deep that anyone under five-foot-five would struggle to get up. A dining chair on casters seems like a brilliant idea until you sit down and the chair kicks backward. A substantialcoffee tablemade of oak boards has been wire-brushed (afaux-distressed finish sometimes used to give floors a rustic patina), leaving the grain open and the edges chipping. Anotheroak-veneer coffee table’s surfaceis craggy to the touch, not ideal for a tabletop that may, at some point in its life, encounter crumbs.
Or the Hillside, a spindle-legged dining chair with a tall back of Dr. Seuss proportions. There is a concept here — it’s a fusion of two famous chairs,a Shaker ladderbackand aMackintosh, a looming, austere style created in 1897 and revived in the 1980s. (InBlade Runner, Rachael smokes a cigarette while sitting in aMackintosh chair.) Combining the two does not make much intuitive sense, which isn’t a necessarily problem — part of a designer’s remit is to find resonance in unexpected places, to make aesthetic connections most people don’t see. But this chair does not make that connection. It looks like the product of an online “What would our baby look like?” generator for chairs.
Like other home-goods companies that grew up online during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sundays and Hetta make products that look good in photos but need to be checked out IRL before buying. I liked some of the brand’s wooden furniture, like theField stooland theScandi-inspired Tuck In chair.The branding is great, but although the furniture isn’t bad, it’s not good enough to buy sight unseen.
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