With the power to completely transform a room, the sofa remains a statement piece of furniture when it comes to home decor. We thought we’d take a look back at the history of the sofa and how its changing style over the centuries can give us some home design inspiration today. If you’re looking for further lounge décor ideas, check out the new sofas range at Laura Ashley.

Sofas have been in use for thousands of years, with the oldest couch in the world being found in Egypt, dating back to the year 2000BC. The word sofa originates from the Middle East, where suffah is the Arabic for bench. The earliest recorded use of the word sofa comes from Turkey in 1625, where the word is recorded as meaning “raised section of a floor, covered with carpets and cushions”.

Originally sofas were found only in the homes of the very rich or in communal areas. In the Middle East, for example, mattresses were placed along the walls of Persian diwan, or council offices, with cushions as back rests, giving us what we now know as the Divan. From communal buildings, sofas transferred into the home as people began to settle in permanent living quarters and the size of these living quarters, as well as families, began to grow.

Originally viewed as a symbol of wealth, comfort and permanence, sofas were used by the upper and upper middle classes as a place to rest and recline – the word couch comes from the French coucher, meaning to lie down. So initially sofas were stuffed with materials that made reclining comfortable, such as feathers, straw and horsehair.

As incomes grew, sofa designs became more ornate, and rather than being seen as a purely functional item of furniture they grew to become the centre piece of the living rooms, sitting rooms, and drawing rooms of homes around the world. As their use expanded to the homes of the middle and lower classes, cheaper materials were used for mass production. Now used for sitting more than reclining, sofa springs were designed to replace horsehair and feathers, and back rests became a more prominent part of the sofa design.

Over the centuries, hundreds of different variations on the sofa have been developed, depending on passing fads and trends, many of which have remained popular to this day. The bed-like Divan, the low-backed, deep-buttoned Chesterfield, and the classic single-armrest Chaise Longue all date back centuries but do not look out of place in today’s lounges. In more recent years the sofa has adapted to suit our lifestyles, so we now have corner sofas and sofa beds to help conserve space, and reclining sofas designed to be more comfortable to sit in front of the TV.