I’m in the market for a new sofa. How can I avoid making a wrong choice? How can I choose what is best?
Several factors go into deciding what kind of furniture to purchase. Here are a few questions which will help you determine which sofa will best suit your needs.
What is your budget?
Only you know how much money you are prepared to spend, but the important thing is getting quality within each price range. There are many features like reclining seats, power vs. manual, built-in reading lights, USB plugs, massage functions, and much more you can buy in a sofa. They will affect the price of the piece, and more bells and whistles don’t always equate to higher quality. Decide which are the most important to you.
How will you use your sofa?
Is this furniture going into a man cave, a formal living room, or 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?
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 or may not go with the rest of the room.
Who will be using it?
If you expect pets, kids, or teens, to be using the sofa on a daily basis, it will be imperative that you choose something which is 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.
What are the size of the room, other furniture and the size of the people using it?
First, 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.
Second, 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. I’ve been called out to help a customer only to find that her legs shoot straight out towards the tv which is NOT comfortable.
The other main area of concern I hear about is the amount of lumbar support in a piece. 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. 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.
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, so you will often find that by mixing in 15% leather shavings in the polyurethane coating of the upholstery they now 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. In my opinion, knowing precisely what upholstery product you are buying is the most important.
Repair. Restore. Renew.
After all that work looking for a sofa you love it would be great if it lasted forever. New Creations USA can’t guarantee eternal life for your sofa, 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 USA mobile technician. We repair sofa frames, springs, electrical components, pull handles, padding issues, tears in cloth, vinyl or leather, conditioning and dyeing leather, and even recovering worn sections with the factory supplied upholstery.