We've said before that the living room deserves as much thought as the bedroom. When we started working on a piece of furniture for it, we thought we understood the brief. Comfortable seating. Enough space for a family. Something that looks good in photos.
A month in, once we'd actually spoken to enough Malaysian households about how their living rooms get used, the brief changed.
Nobody's living room does just one job
Every home we looked at told a version of the same story. The living room was where the kids did homework at the coffee table. Where an aunty stayed over during Raya or Deepavali and someone gave up the sofa without really thinking about it. Where a nap happened most Sunday afternoons, right there, not in the bedroom.
None of that was a special occasion. It was just Tuesday.
And yet almost nobody we spoke to had furniture that was actually built for all of that. They had a sofa that looked fine and a guest sleeping situation that was, honestly, a bit of a scramble — a mattress from storage, a spare room that didn't exist, or someone just making do on cushions. We wrote a full breakdown of these three options earlier this month, and almost every household we spoke to recognised themselves in it.
That gap is what we built for
This is why the Sonno Sofa Bed exists. Not as a novelty, not as "a sofa that also happens to fold out," but as a piece of furniture designed from the inside out for how Malaysian homes actually function, comfortable enough to be the sofa you use every day, and properly built enough that the bed underneath isn't a compromise. If you're still weighing up whether it's the right fit for your space, our sofa bed buying guide covers exactly what to look for.
ComfortFlex™ High-Density Foam so it holds up to years of daily use, not just occasional guests. CertiPUR-US® and OEKO-TEX® certification because if it's good enough for a mattress, it should be good enough for the living room too. Six colour ways because your living room isn't generic, and your furniture shouldn't be either.
Thank you for making this launch what it was
Since 11 August, we've heard from a lot of you, which colour way you picked, which room it's going into, who's going to be the first guest to sleep on it. You can read more of what customers have shared about sleeping on Sonno here. That feedback is exactly why we build things this way: slowly, with real households in mind, rather than rushing something out because a trend said we should.
It's the same reason we've always cared about the details most people skip from what actually goes into good sleep hygiene to how couples navigate sharing a bed comfortably. A sofa bed for your living room comes from the same place as a mattress for your bedroom: the belief that comfort shouldn't be an afterthought anywhere in your home.
And if you're using the long weekend to sort a few more things out, our Merdeka home refresh guide is a good place to start.
This Merdeka, as many of you host family and catch up with people you don't see often enough, we hope your living room is doing exactly what it's meant to do - working hard, without you having to think about it.
Selamat Hari Merdeka, from all of us at Sonno.
