With the opening later this month of its first New York store, Minneapolis-based Room & Board will be the new home-furnishings kid on the block – but that doesn’t mean it’s new to town. Like West Elm and Design Within Reach, both of which infiltrated the city by way of online and mail orders before finally setting up Manhattan shops, the 20-year-old retailer has generated a taste among New Yorkers for its handsome and affordable designs through its Shop From Home catalog and Web site. So certain is Room & Board of its urban appeal that it has signed a 20-year lease in the old Knoll building in SoHo.

And with good reason. Room & Board offers a much wider array of high-quality furniture and home accessories than many of its retail brethren. To appreciate Room & Board’s selection of “small-scale” sofas, tailored for the limited confines of city apartments, one need look no further than the competition. At Restoration Hardware there is the lone Camelback Sofette ($1,450-$1,850). Pottery Barn is more generous, with seven small-sofa models available ($1,099-$2,499), and Crate and Barrel carries nine in all ($899-$1,499), but four of their five loveseats are armless, and the two settees don’t necessarily project comfort. Ikea sells at least a dozen “two-seater sofas” ($199-$999) – that is, if the buyer agrees that what can amount to foam cushions and popsicle sticks counts as furniture. Room & Board caries three times that number – 38 models in all – starting at $699 and topping out at $3,199.

The variety is due in part to Room & Board’s plucky design ethos. In an age of branding, it’s not easy to find a retailer confident enough in its taste to claim on its Web site, “We believe excellent design is timeless, not driven by trends,” and actually mean it. Rather than limiting its identity to a specific aesthetic, the company seeks inspiration as far back as the 14th century, relying particularly on three favorite “ideals”: the Arts & Crafts movement, mid-century Modernism, and Asian design.

Those partial to the more familiar lines of 16th- through 20th-century antique design should investigate the highly appealing Retrospect Collection. The rolled arms and turned wood feet of the soft velvet Garret sofa ($1,299) conjure, well, a garret – albeit one with central heating (and a fireplace). The Hawthorne ($1,049), meanwhile, is clean, simple, and upholstered in a stain-resistant linen-like material.

Room & Board’s wide-ranging influences are apparent in everything from its bedding to its outdoor furniture, all of which is currently offered online, but will be available to test and touch in real time when the company’s SoHo outpost opens on December 30 (doors open at noon). Those of us who thought the last thing SoHo needed was another furniture store may have spoken too soon.

Room & Board, 105 Wooster St., between Spring and Prince streets, 800-486-6554, www.roomandboard.com.