A good armchair is one of the few pieces of furniture that belongs entirely to one person. The sofa is shared. The armchair is yours. It is where you read, where you decompress, where you sit with a coffee before the rest of the house wakes up. Which is exactly why choosing the wrong one is so deflating. Too deep and you’re swallowed by it. Too upright and it feels like waiting room seating. The proportions have to be right for how you actually sit, which is rarely the way furniture is photographed.

We’ve been looking at everything from proper high backed reading chairs to lower, wider occasional chairs that anchor a corner without dominating it. Fabric matters enormously here. Boucle wears differently to velvet, linen ages differently to both. We’ve thought about all of it. These are the armchairs we would genuinely put in our own homes, chosen because they are comfortable to live with, not just beautiful to look at.