Arabic seating suits Wellington homes because it arrives in pieces. Sofhu, a manufacturer in Türkiye, builds majlis sofa and floor sofa sets to your wall measurements and ships them free. A floor sofa comes as separate vacuum-packed cushions, which are far easier to carry up steps and through narrow doors than a framed couch. Seats use 32 kg/m³ high-density foam with washable covers.
- Format
- Modular cushions: seats, backrests, armrests
- Packing
- Vacuum sealed for shipping
- Maker
- Sofhu, manufacturer in Türkiye
- Sizing
- Made to your wall measurements
- Foam
- 32 kg/m³ (32 DNS), no springs
- Shipping to Wellington
- Free
On this page
Anyone who has moved a couch into a Wellington house knows the problem: the street is steep, the front door is up a run of steps, and the hallway turns a corner. A majlis sofa for a Wellington home avoids most of that, above all in its low form, the Arabic floor sofa. Buyers receive a floor sofa as a stack of separate cushions, vacuum packed, which are far easier to carry to the room than a framed couch. Sofhu makes the set in Türkiye to your wall measurements and ships it free.
Why modular seating suits a hillside house
Sofhu makes two products. The Arabic majlis is raised to sofa height and built as upholstered units with a solid base, fixed backs and arm bolsters. The Arabic floor sofa is the low one, and it has no single large frame. A typical run is made of seat mattresses, back cushions that lean on the wall and armrests that sit between or beside the sitters. Each is its own piece with its own zippered cover and foam insert.
For the journey, Sofhu compresses the pieces in sealed vacuum bags to reduce their volume. That matters in a city of hilly streets and stepped access. The pieces go up the path and through the door while still compact, and they recover their shape once the bags are opened in the room. The post on how a majlis is packed and delivered describes the process.
The same structure helps later. Sofhu describes its sets as modular and easy to rearrange, so a set can change shape if you move house.
Who sits on a majlis in Wellington
Wellington’s Muslim community includes Somali, Arab and South Asian families. As the capital, the city also hosts the embassies of several Muslim-majority states, and with them diplomats and staff who are used to receiving guests in a majlis.
So the orders that make sense here are of two kinds. The first is the family room: a majlis or a floor sofa for Eid, for Friday visitors, and for evenings when the cousins come over. Somali households can see how Sofhu approaches their sitting rooms under Somali Arabic seating, and the wider family of low sets is described on the Arabic jalsa page. The second is the formal reception room, where a raised wooden-frame set with a coffee table can be the better fit. That is covered in the office majlis: reception seating for companies and embassies.
Arabic floor seating in compact rooms
Rooms in older hillside houses and inner-city flats can be modest in size and irregular in shape. A made-to-measure set is useful here because it is cut to the wall, not to a catalogue length.
- A single row under the window keeps the view and frees the floor.
- An L-shape in the corner furthest from the door seats the most people for the least floor area.
- A U-shape works where the lounge is its own room with three clear walls.
Remember that floor sofas are not freestanding and need a wall behind every run. A bay window, a chimney breast or a sloping wall under the stairs should be drawn on your sketch with its own measurements. A majlis in a small apartment gives worked layouts.
Covers for a cool, windy city
Wellington is cool and famously windy, and a lounge can feel chilly even in spring. Warm-pile fabrics earn their place. Velvet is soft against the skin and, in Sofhu’s description, durable and easy to clean. Chenille has a heavier woven texture and sheds very little. Kilim-pattern and sadu-pattern weaves, like the red and grey floor sofas shown on this page, bring colour into a room on a grey southerly day.
All covers unzip. Sofhu states they can be machine washed at 30°C, which is worth having through a long wet winter.
Three facts about the foam
- Density: the seats use 32 kg/m³ polyurethane foam, written as 32 DNS in Türkiye. A cubic metre of it weighs about 32 kg.
- What that means: denser foam has more material in it and generally keeps its height and support longer than low-density foam.
- Feel: density is not firmness. You can ask for a softer or firmer seat on a custom order, and there are no springs inside.
Measuring up and asking for a price
Sofhu builds to order and delivers to the door, so the first step is yours. Measure each wall that will take seating, note doors, windows and heaters, and take photos of both the room and the access from the street. Send them through get a quote by measurement or by WhatsApp.
Duties or taxes may apply depending on the destination. Ask about New Zealand before you order and read importing a majlis to Australia and New Zealand. For how buying direct from a maker works, see the Arabic furniture store online page. The existing page on Arabic sofas in New Zealand gives the national view, and across Cook Strait there is a page for Christchurch.
