Montana Brown Recliner Sofa: which of the three units to buy

Sets sold as a 3+2+1 are rarely bought complete, and the Montana Brown Recliner Sofa is no exception: the configuration menu on its page lets you take the chair, the 2 seater or the 3 seater by itself. Deciding which is arithmetic, and the arithmetic is unforgiving once a corner is involved.

518cm, laid end to end

The listed widths are 228cm for the 3 seater, 175cm for the 2 seater and 115cm for the chair. Together that is 518cm of frontage, every piece of it 100cm deep. Almost nowhere domestic has 518cm of uninterrupted wall, which is why sets like this go round two or three walls.

How a corner eats the wall

Here is the part most floor plans get wrong. Where two units meet at a right angle, the depth of the first takes up the width available to the second. With a 100cm depth, the wall you need for the second piece is its own width plus a full metre.

• 3 seater down one wall, 2 seater round the corner: the second wall needs 175 + 100 = 275cm.
• 2 seater and chair at right angles: the second wall needs 115 + 100 = 215cm.
• Chair added opposite rather than cornered: it needs only its own 115cm, which is why that is usually where it goes.

Check doors and radiators against those totals before anything else. A 275cm wall sounds generous until a door swings into the last 80cm of it.

Think about the chair first

At 115cm wide the chair is broader than many armchairs, and it carries the same 100cm depth and 107cm height as the larger units. It is also the piece most often measured wrong, because it reads as an armchair on the page and takes the depth of a sofa. If it is going beside a doorway or between a wall and a chimney breast, measure the gap at the skirting rather than higher up.

What leatheraire is, as the listing puts it

The description calls the covering a leatheraire fabric, set out as giving the appearance of leather while avoiding the brittleness, cracking and peeling associated with it, and it claims a scratch and waterproof resistant surface. That wording is the supplier's. There is no fibre or coating composition, no abrasion figure and no test standard quoted, so take it as a description of intent rather than a measured property, and ask the shop what cleaning is recommended.

The gaps worth a phone call

Two things are missing that a buyer would reasonably want. The listing gives no seat height, so there is nothing to compare against the dining chairs or the sofa you already own. And it does not say whether the recline is worked by hand or by a motor, which decides whether you need a socket behind the unit. Both are quick questions.

Brown is one of four colourways at identical sizes: the Montana Ivory Recliner Sofa and the Montana Black Recliner Sofa are the two extremes, and for a powered mechanism the Rose Brown E-Recliner Sofa states one outright.

Ordering

Choose your units on the Montana Brown Recliner Sofa page, or compare the Sofas range for a smaller footprint. Delivery is free within 50 miles of the Glasgow store and £50 beyond; the shop can confirm the current lead time.