Your sofa plays a big role making your house feel like your home. A good couch takes comfort, function, and aesthetics, and rolls them all together, which means it can be difficult to choose which type of sofa to get!
So, if you’re in the market for a new sofa, how can you avoid making the wrong choice? How can you know what is best? And, perhaps most importantly, how can you know which sofa will last the longest? After all, a good sofa is a long-term investment.
Several factors go into deciding what kind of furniture to purchase. Here are a few questions that may help you determine which sofa will best suit your needs.
What’s your budget?
Only you know how much money you are prepared to spend, but the important thing is getting quality within each price range. Modern sofas can include many interesting or unusual features, including reclining seats, storage compartments, built-in reading lights, USB plugs, massage functions, and much more.
These features will affect the price of the piece, of course; however, more bells and whistles don’t always denote higher quality. Decide which features are the most important to you and make sure you prioritize them when choosing a sofa.
How will you use your sofa?
Is this furniture going into a formal living room? A “man-cave?” A rumpus room that doubles as a daycare? What are the everyday activities that your sofa will be expected to host? TV watching? Reclining? Naps? Or will it only be used occasionally for formal events? A more-formal sofa might sacrifice comfort for aesthetics, while an informal sofa might cost less, but wear out quickly.
What is the style of the room?
Choose a style which complements the other furnishings in the room and the home. That teal sofa may be a good deal, but it may not match your red easy chair.
What’s the size of the room/other furniture/the people using it?
Scale is important for a variety of reasons. If you have existing furniture, you want everything to fit well without impeding traffic flow within the room. Moreover, make sure that the sofa fits you. Some people have a leg length that simply doesn’t fit the sofa or knees that don’t fit comfortably around the edge of the seat.
Another area of concern is lumbar support. Make sure that when sitting in the chair, your lower back feels adequately supported. You aren’t paying for back pain.
What material should we go with?
The feel of the upholstery will be important. Some people will sit on a sofa and feel like they are sliding off the front of the chair, or conversely, they feel like the upholstery grabs their clothes and they can’t move around. When choosing a sofa, make sure to be aware of material as you sit in the store models. Most furniture stores won’t let you return pieces for comfort issues like this.
Who will be using it?
If you expect pets, kids, or teens, to be using the sofa on a daily basis, it’s pretty important that you choose something that’s easy to clean and will hold up to wear. Microfiber is often a good choice because it is easy to clean, looks nice, and repairs well. Leather also hold up fairly well to day-to-day wear and tear.
What is the real material in the sofa?
Many people believe they have purchased a leather couch only to find out it’s a synthetic or human-made product. The industry is not well regulated regarding the definition of the word ‘leather’: In fact, some manufacturers mix in 15% leather shavings to the polyurethane coating of the upholstery so they can call it leather (instead of vinyl). As you can imagine, this product does not wear nearly as well long-term as full grain leather upholstery.
Many sofas have full leather on the seating surfaces, but the side panels and rear panels are made of a very well-matched vinyl. A mixed material sofa can be a perfectly acceptable compromise to the higher cost associated with a fully upholstered leather sofa, as long as you are aware of what you are buying.
Repair. Restore. Renew.
After all that work looking for a sofa you love, wouldn’t it be great if it lasted forever?
Before 
After
Before 
After
New Creations can’t guarantee your sofa’s eternal life, but we do have the skills to extend the life of your furniture with quality repairs. Many cosmetic and comfort issues can be repaired, restored, or renewed by a New Creations mobile technician including sofa frames, springs, electrical components, pull handles, padding issues, tears, faded leather, and even recovering worn sections with the factory supplied upholstery.
