If you’ve been watching the weather outside lately, you know that this is the time of year to curl up on the couch for a long winter’s nap – or at least long winter weekends watching movies or college hoops.

But the trendiest Hoosiers aren’t becoming couch potatoes anymore.

“Chaise potatoes” is more like it.

Sofas, sectionals and even chairs with put-your-feet-up styling that decorators call chaises are more and more taking center stage in area media rooms – and great rooms, family rooms, living rooms, bedrooms and sunrooms.

“People just like to lounge with their feet up. They like comfort,” says Honor Lothamer, a designer with Kittle’s Furniture at 614 Coliseum Blvd. E.

Chaises have all but nudged recliners – even the formerly luxe ones on the ends of sofas – out the door, Lothamer says.

A chaise “gives you the idea of a recliner, without the recliner mechanism and without that recliner look. Typically, recliners look big and overstuffed and sometimes even clunky. A lot of women don’t like them. … A chaise has a sleeker, more contemporary look,” she says.

Area interior designers say several trends are driving chaise purchases, which have grown in the last three to five years.

More homes are being built with great rooms, so decorating becomes more about filling a central space than lining the walls of a box. Big-screen televisions – and media rooms and home theaters – invite lounging.

And an aging population with aching bones and expanding families – teens and 20-somethings tend to come with boyfriends, girlfriends and their friends attached – means the need for more comfortable and more spacious seating for family gatherings.

Face it, a couch comfortably seats three. An L-shaped sectional with two chaise ends can seat seven to nine, if the ends are used as bench-style seating. How many family rooms could fit a couch and loveseat – and three or four chairs?

“People in Fort Wayne are very family-oriented,” says Robyn Ford, interior designer with Rustic Hutch furniture and décor store on Fort Wayne’s north side. “A big sectional, everyone can just kind of flop on it. … You can have everyone laying around in their jimmies. … That’s how we live.”

In some homes, a sectional with a chaise or two surrounding a low ottoman or coffee table has all but replaced the kitchen table or dining room table as the central daily family gathering place for a casual meal. And coupled with a laptop, a chaise can make paying bills seem less of a desk-chained chore.

But, Ford acknowledges, decorating with a chaise can be a little tricky. The foot-end of a chaise tends to protrude into the room. And there’s the matter of placement – what should people sitting in the chaise be able to see? The TV? The fireplace? Views out windows? The kitchen for easy chatting?

But manufacturers, she says, have been eagerly producing pieces not just to accommodate styles from traditional to contemporary to retro but also to accommodate many different configurations.

One newer wrinkle is a sectional with a chaise end that attaches or detaches to become a separate ottoman for seating or use as a coffee or end table, she says.

Then there are you-build-it pieces, which allow customization – with, say a right-side chaise or a left-side chaise on a sectional or even on a conventionally styled sofa.

“There are spec sheets that show you the pieces you can get,” Lothamer says. “To maximize space, you can get, not a wedge, but a corner, so you can push the sectional all the way against a wall.”

She advises those who are considering a chaise sofa or sectional to bring a diagram of their room to the store for a consultation so the scale of piece, as well as its configuration, can be taken into consideration.

“Sometimes a (chaise) sectional just won’t work,” she says.

Sectionals do take up a considerable amount of real estate, says Cindy Friend, interior designer and owner of Cindy Friend Boutique in Fort Wayne’s Covington Plaza.

She says a typical sofa with a chaise adds about 3 feet of width at the chaise end or ends of a 6-foot by 3-foot piece.

“What I usually do is kind of look at the feel of the space,” she explains. “If there’s a big expanse of windows to the south and the TV is to the east, then I would put a right-arm chaise by the windows so you could sit there and read and enjoy the view, and at night when the shades are closed and the TV is on you’re also in the comfort zone in that chaise. That’s how I would lay it out.”

Another option for the space-stressed – furniture-makers have begun making one armed, his-and-her single chaise-style chairs designed to have a table placed between them, Ford says.

Single chaises make for a nice vignette in a bedroom sitting area or in a corner or at the end of a long room, designers say.

Because most pieces of chaise-style furniture tend to get hard use, durable upholstery is key, they say. Leather, bonded leather, and sueded microfibers and heavy nylon velvets are popular.

Chaise purchasers, designers add, need to expect to spend more for the feature – a chaise will add about $300 to the $2,200 cost of a sectional, and bring a conventional sofa to $900 to $1,000. A chair chaise starts around $300.

All prices depend on the style and quality of the piece and choice of fabric, designers say.

But chaises have come a long way from days when they were put at the end of the bed in an upscale master bedroom to catching milady’s silk robe.

And who can forget those skittery ottomans that filled up the center of 1990s style sectionals.

Decorators refer to them as “the pits” – a shortened form of “conversation pits,” not a just a description of what it felt like to sit on them.

“If you would look back in history, whenever you saw a chaise, it was always something classy. You never sat on it – you never saw one in a home when we were kids, says Lothamer, 43.

“Now people just think they’re cool. … With sofas, you’re always looking at form versus function, and with a chaise, you get both. … I think a lot of people love them.”

rsalter@jg.net