I must admit that prior to purchasing a leather settee for my foyer, I had never heard of a settee. I went shopping one day, looking for something that would take up the empty space in my foyer. I was thinking that maybe a leather tub chair would be the best use of space there, perhaps with an end table or two. I was looking for a kind of an antique look, but also something that looked inviting.
The fact that nobody would probably ever sit there meant that I did not have to worry about comfort. I found a piece of furniture that looked like two tub chairs put together. It was almost like a couch. It was brown leather with studs in the leather around the edges and had a beautiful wood frame. When I made the mistake of calling it a “couch”, I was quickly corrected by the sales clerk, who told me that it was, in fact, called a “settee”.
It turns out that a settee is like an elongated chair, sort of like an old-fashioned love seat. They usually look like they belong in a different era, although settees are still made today. Many of them are actually hand crafted. The wood is usually of a much higher quality than other types of chair/couch pieces, and if you choose to go with a leather settee (which I highly recommend), the leather is almost always of the highest quality.
Despite their rigid looks, settees can be quite comfortable. They are not meant to be “sunk into” like a recliner, but seem to have just enough padding and support to make them quite pleasurable to sit in. The best part for me was that the one that I wound up buying that day fit perfectly in the foyer, and it looks fabulous. In fact, my wife likes it so much that she wants to take it out of the foyer and put it underneath this big window we have in our bedroom. I was thinking about giving her one for her birthday that she can put there (shhhhhh!).
