An Unusual Furniture Design Niche: Behind-the-Sofa Consoles | Hacker News Reader

An Unusual Furniture Design Niche: Behind-the-Sofa Consoles

core77.com

20 pointssurprisetalk13 comments

I built one of these as I couldn't find anything online satisfying this niche! I always want to charge my phone while on the couch but hated unsightly cables hanging around the armrest or underneath. Plus, it gave me a convenient spot to put my surround speakers without needing to wall mount.

It's a reasonably easy project for someone with little woodworking experience.

I don't understand why people so often back their sofas against a wall. You don't need an entire room between you and the TV.

we don't all have TVs in our living room

Not for watching tv, but you might need the entire room for doing stretching, doing yoga or other exercises.

I am using a beamer and my TV is the whole wall on the opposite side of the living room. And as mentionned in another post, I like to have space for when I have some visits which allows having chairs around our table.

Besides not all living rooms are equals, I live in a 85m2 flat so the living room is probably much smaller than the one you would see in a typical suburbian house in the USA. And there are a lot of people living in much smaller places.

Some people just have less space. Our European standards are I would say half of the US ones so we need to save space

my apartment used to have a second bedroom, when it was 'opened up' into the living room, we used a sofa extending 'out' from the wall to separate the room

the hardest part was finding a sofa where the back wasn't just a void or some scrap fabrics

Behind-the-sofa consoles might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about furniture, but it's definitely the thing I will do in my house. I'll use them to store books, hide away cables, and add some USB chargers. Sometimes the most practical solutions are the ones you don't even realize you need until you see them somewhere.

There are also electric recliner sofas that have USB and AC built into to the armrests or center console. The recliner needs power anyway, the marginal cost of exposing that power via USB is low enough to justify the utility.

Many years ago, I bought 2x IKEA LACK tv consoles for exactly that purpose. Less than 30€ and is now used to store/display a lot of books right where I need them when relaxing on the sofa :)

This is a good idea, though I think that they are a bit too wide (26cm). They are also 45cm high, so they cannot go behind a sofa

Surely adding a Qi charger would be good here. Having cables dangling over the seats would be annoying if all you want to do is charge your phone

I assume the use case is to charge the phone and use it at the same time.

Otherwise just put your phone on a table or something to charge.

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