In search of a proper reading chair
Reflections on Design
On the small decisions that shape how things age.
This series reflects on everyday design — the objects, spaces, and decisions we live with quietly. Not the moments of failure or spectacle, but the slow erosion of care: where good intentions are diluted by convenience, and thoughtfulness thins over time. Nothing here is broken. Nothing demands attention. And yet, something is slowly lost. Each piece is an attempt to notice what we’ve stopped noticing — and to ask whether things might be made, kept, and lived with a little more deliberately.
At Philosophy Studio, this way of noticing shapes how we design, make, and choose what belongs in the everyday.
Things That Should Be Easier
Reflections on everyday objects and rituals that modern design has quietly made more complicated than they need to be.
There’s a particular armchair I’ve been looking for.
Not the kind designed to impress in a showroom. Not the kind that photographs beautifully but asks you to sit upright and behave. I’m looking for a comfortable reading chair — one that belongs beside a fireplace, with a book in hand and a coffee slowly cooling nearby.
It sounds simple. It hasn’t been.
The brief was clear
This wasn’t a vague, romantic search. I knew exactly what I wanted from the start.
- Comfort first — generous, cushiony, the kind of armchair you can sit in for an hour and forget your body entirely.
- A high back — proper neck support, minimum. Not optional.
- Pleasing to the eye — something that feels at home in a library, not a gallery.
- Not too contemporary — calm, warm, and timeless rather than sharp and declarative.
What I’m looking for is a reading armchair that feels lived in before it’s even been lived in.
What I keep finding instead
After a lot of late-night research, I’ve started noticing a pattern. Most armchairs today fall into one of three categories.
1. The showroom sculpture
Beautiful form. Interesting angles. Thin cushions. You sit down and immediately realise it was designed to be admired, not stayed in.
2. The statement chair
Oversized, dramatic, often low-slung. Looks inviting, but offers little neck support. After twenty minutes, your body starts negotiating with you.
3. The recliner that gave up on beauty
Undeniably comfortable. Equally undeniable that it doesn’t belong in a library room.
Somehow, the comfortable high-back armchair — one that balances design and ease — feels oddly rare.
Did we stop making chairs for reading?
It’s a genuine question.
So many modern armchairs prioritise how they look in a room rather than how they feel in daily life. Back heights are getting lower. Cushions are firmer. Shapes are cleaner, sharper, more minimal.
But reading isn’t minimal.
Reading is stillness. Reading is staying put. It’s shoulders dropping, a coffee cooling on the side table, the fireplace doing its quiet work while the rest of the house carries on.
A proper armchair for reading by the fireplace should be designed for exactly that.
And yet, searching online, it sometimes feels like the industry has decided we don’t do that anymore — not properly.
Maybe it’s nostalgia
Maybe I’m chasing a memory.
Not of a specific chair, but of a time when comfort wasn’t something you had to justify. When armchairs had depth, softness, and backs high enough to lean into. When design didn’t feel the need to prove how clever it was.
Those chairs weren’t trying to make a statement.
They were trying to make you comfortable.
Why this search matters
I’m not looking for perfection. I’m looking for an object designed around a ritual.
A library armchair isn’t just furniture. It’s a place you return to. A place that invites you to slow down. A place that supports how you actually live, not how a room is styled for a photograph.
Our homes should do that more often.
Because when we design only for appearance, we quietly forget the value of staying — of comfort, of repetition, of everyday rituals.
Still looking
I still haven’t found the chair.
I’ve bookmarked and un-bookmarked. I’ve watched reviews where “super comfortable” somehow means sitting bolt upright like you’re in a waiting room. I’ve spent more time researching than I care to admit.
So the search continues.
And maybe that’s the point.
Some things are worth being patient about. Some objects deserve time. Because the right armchair doesn’t just fill a corner.
It becomes a place.