The art of interior design

Design icon Nina Campbell on social seating, making space for a dressing room and cushions' contribution to the season

- JESSICA SALTER

WHEN you have people over for festive gatherings, you notice when you’ve got the seating arrangements right. Seating plans are very important – and not just at a dinner table. I like to think of seating plans for the living room – what I call ‘conversational seating’.

I like a room to have a central focal point, such as a fireplace, and then I arrange seating so that groups of three can sit and talk. A chair either side of the fireplace is a classic seating plan, which I have in my own home, and then you can add a little chair right against the wall by the fireplace – the French call them chauffeurs. Then maybe there is a sofa in there – and I have a corner banquette around one side of the fireplace, where I have found that four or five people can gather and play cards.

The number of chairs you set out is an important consideration. Odd numbers are good for seating plans in general because it allows for some rotation of guests. The interior designer Elsie de Wolfe wrote in 1913 that you must never place a chair on its own in a room; she was very shy herself and noted that it is always the shy person who arrives first, sits on the lone chair and then is often rooted there for the whole party. But two next to each other does not always work, either. I find that two people sitting side by side do not always speak to each other, so having an occasional chair pulled in at a diagonal can create conversational triangles.

I like a mix of some with large pattern, others that are plain, others that bring in a bit of colour. If you have a fabric that you love but can’t afford, then don’t go for a cheap copy – buy what you can afford and either do one chair, or even just a cushion. Cheap copies never look good.