New furniture company marries high-end design with direct-to-consumer convenience

Getting modern furniture shipped to your door is no longer a novelty, but a new company wants to bring the same click-to-buy ease to luxury pieces. The New York-based, Scandinavian-minded Civil just debuted its first collections online, focusing on where “where furniture meets architecture”—aka big-ticket items that today’s nomadic urban dwellers would want to take with them, especially if they’ve spent good money on them for the quality.

Civil, founded by third-generation Norwegian furniture makers, works with Milanese design studio Metrica to design its collections. All of the pieces are manufactured in Brianza, an area in Northern Italy with a centuries-old legacy of fine furniture craftsmanship.

In typical direct-to-consumer fashion, Civil passes on savings to the consumer by cutting out wholesale and retail markups and sale commissions, but pours the same time and resources into design, development, materials, and labor as traditional luxury brands. Some of high-end materials used include full-grain leathers, memory foam, Carrara marble, and stainless steel.

Noord seating system.

Noord, its modular seating series, grows from a single ottoman ($995 and up) and armchair ($1,795 and up) to a number of two-, three- and four-seater variations, including single and double chaise sectionals ($2,495 to $7,790 and up).

The modularity also extends to the savvy “Magic Box” ($1,050 and up), a sleek side table that doubles as a tech hub with built-in wireless charging, USB ports, and outlet.

The wall system, Mosaic, covers everything from bookcases and dressers to credenzas and floating workstations. It also gets more customizable with options for wood combinations and accent colors on the panels.

Rounding out Civil’s current collections is the sculptural Strand side table, which is made of solid Italian steel and comes in four colors. The company is also working on incorporating air-purifying greenery into its wall system, jumping off from the oft-cited NASA study on the health benefits of house plants. Stay tuned.