These new sofas are the colorful, cool antidote to every boring couch you've seen online
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The Inside
- Digital decor startup The Inside has a collection of customizable sofas with more than 100 fabric and print options.
- There are three styles that start at $1,599 and come with free white-glove delivery.
Digital furniture startup The Inside has a curated sofa collection that you can personalize to your heart's content with more than 100 fabric and print choices.
If you're familiar with The Inside, the name probably conjures up images of bold prints, bright colors, and exclusive collaborations with high-end designers. What's perhaps less obvious about its sophisticated furniture, though, is that the prices are under $4,000 with two sofas being in the $2,000 range.
The company's ethos is to go "beyond the beige," which is really more about increasing the diversity of budget-friendly options than convincing people to live inside a snowglobe of Wes Anderson color palettes.
After years of working in interior design, The Inside co-founder and CEO Christiane Lemieux (formerly the executive creative director of Wayfair) explained to Insider that she'd noticed a recurring problem in the industry: "Personal and interesting furniture options did not exist for everyone."
The Inside emphasizes affordable customization as an antidote, and its sofas are the latest in its efforts to give the people what they want: more options.
The Insider has several sofa styles (starting at $1,599) and over 100 fabrics that complement many personal and home decor styles
In the sofa collection, as in all The Inside furniture orders, customers get to experience an affordable, digitized version of the otherwise unattainable interior designer experience. You pick everything: the style of sofa, the pattern and fabric, and, when applicable, the metal framing. Then, the sofa is made from scratch and shipped to your door in a few months; the turnaround time prior to the pandemic was four weeks.
The Inside/Instagram
The Inside sofas are available in the company's 100+ fabrics, including exclusive collaboration prints from Scalamandré, SF Girl by Bay (the original Pinfluencer), Refinery29's Christene Barberich, Homepolish's Katherine Carter, and fashion designers Peter Som and Clare V.
Shoppers from diverse aesthetics — from modern to traditional, maximalist to bohemian, and everything in between — should be able to create something unique that they love on the site. As Lemieux notes, The Inside avoids the siloing of style. "It's less about your preferred pattern or color — because we do offer beige options — and instead about giving people the freedom to choose beyond the same two or three sofa options, by providing access to more than 100 fabrics."
How do they do it? The beige couch problem is, fundamentally, an inventory problem. Since other retailers have to store their furniture, the "drab and uninspired" tend to win the decor war for their simple functionality. Since The Inside doesn't carry inventory or have middlemen, it's possible to make high-quality home decor on demand at reasonable prices. All furniture is made from scratch, and to cut expensive traditional photography, the company's photos are 3D rendered instead.
If you want to see the fabrics in your own home, you can order swatches for $1 each with free shipping. And if you love the idea of playing with color and going with a Scalamandre zebra print à la the Royal Tenenbaums — but you're not sure how — just email hi@theinside.com for free personalized design advice. If your questions are more in-depth than simple color-matching, they'll be passed along to the team's veteran designers to weigh in.
Perhaps due to a resourceful business model, a lean and passionate team, or its playful collaborations with big names priced for small budgets, The Inside feels more like a collaborative passion project than another face in the D2C home decor space. Like watching Meryl Streep play a dynamic character role, the sense of fun is palpable from behind the screen. This love of interior design — and the symptomatic desire to give more people the freedom to design a space that feels like them — is again present in its take on sofas, the de-facto centerpiece of a home.