What Colour Tile Goes With a Black Leather Sofa?
A black leather sofa could be the most complex piece in your living room — or it could be Moby Dick’s dark twin, a leviathan that overlooks the space. Weave that lavish expanse of smooth black to your decor, beginning at floor level. A tile floor in the living room is unexpected and substantial enough to balance a very strong piece of furniture. Consider a few of the many alternatives before deciding which tile gets to share space with your trophy couch.
Flame and Shadow
Leather is a powerful natural material, and so is clay. Park that the showpiece sofa on a warm, vibrant, terra-cotta tile floor and enjoy the abundance of textures that include the contrasting colors. Terra cotta has myriad hues, from orange to a kind of faded-autumn-leaf-brown to your variegated swirl of oranges, yellows, blues, greens and other mineral shades. The tiles are big squares — the classic design — polygons, or smaller tiles set in patterns such as herringbone. Keep the floor design simple so you do not overwhelm the couch. And associate the two leather sofa and glazed floor using a silk accent cushion or an angora throw in pumpkin or burnt orange.
Skins and Fossils
The leather couch is dyed animal mask; the floor is slabs of mini embedded fossils, millions of years old. Limestone is lacy, chalky and lovely, studded with tiny shells and the shapes of whatever animals were compressed to an ancient seabed. Limestone is the lighting to black leather’s dark, but it requires more care than do other types of tile. The stone is comparatively delicate, so protect it from furniture legs, tracked in dirt and heavy traffic. Seal limestone tile, dry-mop it regularly and wipe up any spills immediately; even a sealed floor will absorb red wine. Harness the contrast in colors between sofa and tile using a black and limestone-white area rug under the sofa or a runner above the frequent footpath worn by the traffic pattern within the room.
Black on Black
Black tile floor is as dramatic as the black leather sofa, but a room could be overly stark and dark with no relief. Layer several rugs between the sofa and the tile. Rugs highlight the rich absence of color in leather and tile and ground the room so that it does not look like endless space. In a minimalist living room, solid neutral-colored rugs — a dove grey to pull the conversation room with a more compact caramel apartment weave under the coffee table — leave a broad edge of tile floor as a frame that mirrors the black couch. Contemporary decor is organized on a cream, gray and charcoal abstract patterned rug, and an oriental rug adds heat to conventional accessories and furnishings.
Patchwork Floor Quilt
The sofa is a declaration piece so the tile floor can shout a bit, or a whole lot, to create an interesting tension in the room. Tile the floor like a crazy patchwork quilt using bright ceramics: square glazed tiles in primary and secondary colors with lots of white and black along with a mishmash of layouts juxtaposed. Geometric color shapes mixed with arbitrary yellow, red and green tiles, thick white diagonal stripes, and a kaleidoscope of overlapping angles, half-circles and wavy lines are so energetic that the sofa becomes an island of peaceful dot from the exuberant room. The crazy tile does look to be quite a contemporary patchwork quilt on the floor. Any area rugs layered above the tile needs to be meticulously tested in the space to guarantee a rug does not detract from the sober sofa or the crazy tile.