Showroom

B&B Italia

Over 25,000 square feet on two floors, carrying Maxalto, Azucena, Flos, Louis Poulsen, and Arclinea alongside the main collection.

B&B Italia holds the Madison Avenue flagship, and what makes it worth a visit is that the group's other houses are in the same building rather than scattered across the city.

Maxalto is there, which is the group's classical line and reads nothing like the main collection. So is Azucena, the Milanese house whose pieces date from the 1940s and 50s and are still made to the original drawings. Arclinea covers kitchens. Flos and Louis Poulsen cover lighting. A designer can settle a sofa, a dining table, a kitchen and the lighting over it in one appointment, against real samples, without leaving the block.

The showroom is open to the public and keeps Saturday hours, which is unusual in this trade and makes it one of the few places a homeowner can see this material without a designer's account.

What to do there is check finishes rather than shapes. The upholstery programme runs to hundreds of covers and the difference between two greys in the same weave is not readable from a card, particularly across the large plain surfaces the collection favours. The floor holds enough of the range in enough covers to make that comparison possible, which is the reason to go rather than specify from the catalogue.

Seeing five houses under one roof is efficient and it is also a sales argument, because the group would rather a project stayed inside it. It does not make the efficiency less real for a designer working to a deadline.