Sofas in Hyderabad — size first, then the foam, then the stair

A sofa is the largest object most living rooms will ever take that is not a wall. Get the length wrong and the passage dies. Get the foam wrong and you replace it in three years. Get the lift wrong and it never comes out of the tempo.

Hexie Homes is an upholstery workshop first. Most of the sofas we touch are repaired or recovered. When the frame has gone, or the room is an odd length, we build one to the tape. We are not a boxed-sofa showroom with fifty SKUs on an app.

A three-seat that leaves a walkway. That is the job.

Size — the numbers that decide the room

Measure the wall, then the door, then the lift. In that order.

The rule that survives contact with a real flat: the sofa should be about two-thirds of the wall it sits on. Longer and the room reads as furniture with a gap either side; shorter and it looks stranded.

Seat depth is not overall depth. Overall — the box that has to clear your door — is usually 85–100 cm. Seat depth is the cushion you actually sit back into: 48–53 cm suits shorter legs, 53–60 cm suits most adults here, and 60–70 cm is a lounge piece that will eat an eleven-foot 2 BHK. A European listing quoting an 85–100 cm seat is describing something else.

Seat height 43–48 cm for most adults. Below 40 cm the grandparents will not use it. Above 50 cm it starts to feel like a dining chair.

The five clearances

These are the numbers to draw before anyone opens a fabric book. A sofa that fits the wall and kills the walkway is still the wrong sofa.

How far from the wall — and when it should touch

Leave 8–12 cm behind a sofa that is not doing a job with its back. Air stops the plaster sweating onto the cloth and stops the skirting chewing the webbing.

When it should touch, or nearly. A 2 BHK where those ten centimetres are the coffee table. A sofa used as a partition, back to the dining, with a finished face. A window AC whose drip forces you off that wall anyway.

When it must not. An open-plan float — put a slim console in the gap. A west wall that cooks in April. Legs you paid for: pin legs shoved against the skirting are a box you overpaid for.

Measure the gap. Do not guess it from a 3D.

Styles — what the theme is actually asking for

Contemporary. Tight or slim pillow back, straight arm, visible legs. Tuxedo if the room is formal.

Mid-century. Tapered timber legs, and the legs are the point. A skirt on this silhouette is a different sofa.

Classic and club. Chesterfield — rolled arm, deep button tuft. Needs a room that can carry the weight.

Soft modern, the 2026 curve. Bouclé photographs beautifully. Dust lives in it. Ask for a performance weave if there are children.

Family 3+1+1. Still how grandparents and guests sit without sharing a cushion, and we still make it. An L that seats six in a room that cannot walk six people is theatre.

Backs, and the mechanisms inside them

Tight back — tailored, no scatter cushions required, and it takes a full recover later rather than a cushion swap. Pillow back — cushions you can turn, which is the whole advantage; they slump if the fill is fibre only. Tufted — the buttons hold the fill in place; do not tuft a cloth you expect to wash.

Ratchet headrest. The top third clicks up for television. Write the make of the ratchet on the quote — it is the part that will need a spare.

Recliner. Measure the wall gap with the footrest out — that is 30–40 cm extra. In a 2 BHK the recliner often wins the room and loses the passage.

Sofa-cum-bed. Fine for a guest room. Open it in the workshop before you pay for the cloth.

How a sofa finishes a living room

It sets the scale, the conversation, the walk from the door to the slider, and the cloth temperature of the room. A west-facing linen and a west-facing velvet are two different rooms in May.

Pull the sofa off the wall by a hand's width, put a rug under the front legs, keep 40 cm to the table. The walls can still be builder paint.

When a bedroom wants a sofa

When the master is large enough that a compact 2-seat does not block the wardrobe swing. When someone actually reads in that room. When a teenager's room is also where friends sit.

Wrong when it is the old living-room 3-seat dumped at the foot of the bed.

A chaise in a corner with a light over it earns its floor. A sofa-cum-bed in a guest room is the other version that does.

Cloth — plains, prints, two-tone

Hyderabad dust, west sun and turmeric do more to a sofa than the theme board ever will.

Tight weave for a daily seat. A performance finish if there are children or a dog. A linen blend rather than an open pure linen. Velvet in a room that is air-conditioned.

Print on the outside back and arms, plain on the seat. The print is what you see from the dining table. The plains take the wear and can be turned.

Or plain body, print only on the cushions. You can swap the print in three years without stripping the frame.

Martindale, where the mill publishes it: 15,000 rubs for light domestic use, 25,000 for a family seat, 40,000 if this is the only sofa in the house.

Loose cover — pull it off and wash it. This is the answer for children and dogs, and it is worth asking for at the quote stage rather than after.

Legs

Bun or turned timber, 8–12 cm. Tapered mid-century, 12–18 cm — the sofa looks lighter and the gap collects toys. Metal pin — unforgiving on an uneven slab, so use felt. Plinth — no mop under it, and ants prefer it. Skirt — hides cheap legs and dust, and makes a small room heavier.

Write the height on the drawing. A 5 cm bun against a 15 cm taper decides whether an older person can stand up out of it.

How a sofa is made

Frame. Kiln-dried hardwood at the corners, glued and screwed, with a corner block. Particle board is why a two-year-old sofa wobbles. We re-glue more frames than we build.

Suspension. Jute or elastic webbing, or sinuous springs. Webbing is honest if it is tight and doubled at the front. It is also what sags first on a family sofa.

Frame first. Then the webbing. Foam is the third layer, not the first.

Fill

Where each density goes

One sofa is not one foam. The three parts do different jobs and are built differently, and a quote that gives a single density for the whole piece has not thought about it.

Seat. The hardest-working part, and the highest density — 32–40D HR, with a softer comfort wrap over the top so it is not a board on day one. Not a single block of supermarket foam.

Back. Softer on purpose. 28D, or fibre wrapped over a foam core. A back cushion is leaned against rather than sat on, and a back as firm as the seat pushes you forward out of it. Fibre alone is fine here and hopeless in a seat, which is why the same word means two different things depending on which cushion you are holding.

Arms. Foam wrapped over the rail rather than a cushion in its own right. There is no density to quote, so the thing to check is depth — enough wrap that you cannot feel the timber through it when you rest your weight on the arm to stand up.

We use Sleepwell foam as standard. It is the same brand we sell on the mattress floor, and it is what goes into a Hexie sofa unless you ask for something else. One named foam, written on the quote, is the whole point — a density you cannot trace to a maker is a number somebody typed.

What it costs in Hyderabad, late 2026

Planning bands after two years of material movement. GST is in our number, and fitting and the stair crew are a written line rather than a surprise. These are asking bands, not a printed rate card — the quote for your room is the figure to hold us to.

Recover the one you have

A recover is worth it only if the rails are hardwood rather than particle board. The advantage is that you already know how the thing sits.

New, made to the tape

What you are buying is a length the market does not sell — 190 cm on a 2 BHK wall, a 52 cm seat because that is the household, a return that misses a column.

So you can compare

A boxed sofa is a price. It is not always a density, and it is never a length that matches your wall — custom depth is extra even at the premium end. If nobody will write 32D HR on the invoice, you are buying the photograph.

A seven-foot 3-seat at ₹5,500 a running foot is about ₹38,000 before GST and before a cloth you would sit guests on. That is why our own 3-seat band does not start there.

Interior-package quotes in this city are often written per seat, which is a turnkey room line rather than a workshop recover — the two are not comparable. What a whole job costs has the rest of that arithmetic.

Warranty, and how long a sofa lasts

Our own fitting is guaranteed for three months, and beyond that we will always tell you what putting something right would take and what it would cost. The full terms are on the questions page and they are the ones that bind.

The rest is life expectancy rather than cover, and it is worth knowing before you buy:

• Foam — plan a refresh at five to eight years on a 32D seat that works every evening.
• Fabric — the mill's rub count and colour-fastness govern, not us. West sun voids a lot of pale cloth in practice.
• Mechanisms — recliner motors, ratchets and sofa-bed actions carry the manufacturer's own warranty, which passes to you and runs for its own term. Get the make written down so a spare can be found.
• Frame — a sound hardwood frame outlasts several covers. A recover of a frame you already know is often the better buy for exactly that reason.

How Hexie Homes makes a sofa

If the frame is solid and the cloth is tired, we recover. If the foam and webbing have gone and the cloth is sound, we restuff and reweb. If the joints have opened, we strip one end, glue and pin, and close it. If the frame is particle board, or the length is simply wrong for the room, we build a new frame to the tape.

Foam density is written down. Fabric is chosen in the room's own light. A two-tone is a pattern-maker's job, and we do those.

We do not invent a foam brand on the invoice — it says Sleepwell, and the density with it. We do not cover a rotten rail and call it new.

How we carry it

Before we cut a new piece we measure the lift, the stair turn and the door diagonal. An L-shape is built in sections. A one-piece 3-seat is planned to rotate on its end through the door.

On the day: blankets, stretch wrap, two people who have done that stair, cushions carried separately. A monsoon delivery waits, or it goes in a closed vehicle. If it cannot come up, it is remade in pieces — and that conversation happens at the measure, not on the landing.

Custom, and the small apartment

Custom is a length the market does not sell. A 2 BHK wall that wants 190 cm. A return that must miss a column. A 52 cm seat because the shorter adult in the house will not use 65 cm. A curtain cloth that happens to have the rub count. A sofa that has to come up a service stair in two halves.

The combination that keeps winning in a small flat is still the plain one: a 2-seat or a short 3-seat, two chairs, and a table you can walk all the way round. The L is for the corner that is actually free.

Process

1. Photograph of the wall, the door, and the stair or lift.
2. Site visit — ₹500, refundable against the job. Tape on site, and the seat height tested with the people who will sit on it.
3. Recover, restuff, or a new frame.
4. Cloth chosen in the room's light. A two-tone drawn as a panel map.
5. Making: three to six weeks for a recover, five to eight for a new frame. An indented cloth runs longer, so the date on your quote is the one to hold us to rather than the range.
6. Carry, place, level. Fitting defects we made, we come back and fix.

Questions

Should a sofa touch the wall? Only when the room is too tight to give it 8–12 cm, or when the back is working as a partition.

What foam should I ask for? 32D HR as a floor for a daily seat. 36–40D if it is the only sofa in the house and it works every evening.

Is an L-shape right for a 2 BHK? Measure the walkway after the L is drawn. If you have to turn sideways to get to the kitchen, it is not right.

Can you use a curtain fabric on a sofa? Some of them. The rub count and a stain finish decide, and we will tell you before it is cut.

Do you sell ready sofas off the floor? No. We recover, rebuild, and make to size.

Start with the wall

Send a photograph of the wall, the door, and how many people sit on a normal evening. That is enough for a first answer.

Sofa repair and upholstery is the service page, custom furniture is where a new frame lives, and the showroom is on Road No. 12 in Banjara Hills, Monday to Saturday.