How can I tell the quality of a couch (under $1500)?

June 13, 2017 7:27 PM

Searching for a new couch, I am in a fit of indecision, due to two conflicting motivations: 1) I am cheap and want to spend as little money as possible; 2) I also want a really nice couch. How do I figure out what is a good deal, and what is a good couch?

I've been driving my husband crazy, dithering about all of the different options. I've been looking at Crate and Barrell, Article.com, Joybird, Ikea, local furniture outlets, and local furniture stores. We're looking for a couch to put in our new living room--we just bought our first house, after years moving across the country regularly, and we want a nice piece of furniture that will last us for years!

The problem is, I don't know how to evaluate a sofa's quality. I can sit in it and tell whether it's comfy or not.... But the last time we bought a couch just by considering whether it was comfy, it turned out to be a piece of crap, and it's now falling apart after just three years. I have read enough to tell what constitute signs of quality: kiln-fired hardwood, foam density above 1.8, etc.... But I don't really know what any of that actually means for me. And when I sit on a couch in a showroom, I have no way to tell what features the couch actually has.

For the style I want, I can get a couch for $500, or I could get one for $800, or I could get one for $1200. I could also go all out and get one for $2000 or higher, but that's just too much money for me right now. I just am not in a position to know whether the jump from $500 to $800 is worth it for quality, or if the jump to $1200 is worth it. I don't know how much my money is worth. Right now, I'm dithering particularly between the $800 (from a local store) and the $1200 (from an online store).

What advice can you give? Is there a good decision procedure for picking a sofa? Is there a way to tell, in a showroom, whether a couch will last a long while or not?

posted by meese to Home & Garden (9 answers total)

Basically, it's the $2000 couch that lasts forever. Get the cheapest couch you think is comfortable, and figure you'll replace it. My experience with mid-range vs cheap (e.g. West Elm vs Ikea) is that they're both basically crap, but the the chipboard on the West Elm is covered by better looking veneer.

What I would look for in a good piece of furniture is: solid hardwoods, and glued joints rather than staples or screws. I'm sure there are equivalent things to look for in upholstery, but I don't know what they are. Mostly, I see the kind of construction I'm talking about in price ranges well above what you're considering.

I would add that I've been very, very impressed with the relative quality of all my Ikea purchases, considering their frequently ridiculously low prices.
posted by mr vino at 7:50 PM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Red flag: When the couch cushions are stitched to the back. This means you can't flip them, so they'll wear out sooner. That seems to be more a symptom of the $300 price range furniture but I thought it was worth mentioning.
posted by belau at 8:29 PM on June 13, 2017 [8 favorites]

Sign up for the swatches from JoyBird and get their emails. (My swatches came with a personalized email with a coupon.) They routinely do 20% off sales. Our Elliot sofa was $1400 on sale. It's stunning. The customer service was amazing. We've only had it a few months but the quality is great and you can flip and rotate cushions.
posted by Crystalinne at 8:44 PM on June 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't hold myself out as an expert, but a few years ago when I was looking, the $1100-1200 point seemed to be where you jumped from engineered wood to hardwood frames and had reasonably sturdy-looking legs, as well as more substantial fabrics (and actual and reversible cushions). Adjust for inflation, I guess?

I couldn't bring myself to buy an Ikea couch because it wasn't cheap enough for good value so I ended up waiting like a year to fully furnish my living room so I could afford Crate & Barrel. Roughly five years on, it's held up fairly well, with only a bit of pilling on the cushion surfaces.
posted by praemunire at 8:53 PM on June 13, 2017

I think vintage with kiln-dried wood, hand-tied springs and down pillows beat any new cheap sofa. Try estate sales. You can always get a slipcover, too.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:21 PM on June 13, 2017 [5 favorites]

With furniture like beds and couches, you have to convince yourself that the "cheap" decision is to spend a bit more on a quality item that will last you longer than a lower-priced item, and thus work out cheaper per year. Think of it like bulk-buying toilet roll so the per-roll price is lower - higher short term outlay to achieve an overall lower cost.

For what it's worth, I've found the quality of Ikea stuff scales quite reliably with price. I've had wobbly cheap stuff made of chipboard that the veneer peels off after a couple of years, and really good solid-wood stuff that has lasted and looks great/is really comfy.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:40 AM on June 14, 2017

Seconding Joybird. I did a lot of research into this when we bought our couch and they were the best combination of price and quality that I found. They do have sales. We've had our couch two years now and it looks the same, is very comfortable and we constantly get compliments on it.
posted by peacheater at 5:36 AM on June 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

Seconding mr vino about quality of wood and joints. One way to test that, or at least get an idea. Squat down by a front corner of the sofa. Grab the leg, then lift - carefully, don't hurt your back - that corner off the ground. The better the wood and the joins, the sooner the back leg on that end of the sofa will come off the ground.
posted by Homer42 at 5:42 AM on June 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

Don't buy an expensive couch that you haven't had a chance to sit in, lie on, touch and feel. Learn from the terrible mistakes of others.

We bought a $600 couch from Costco nine-ish years ago, and it's been great. It's only now starting to show signs of wear an tear (springs disconnecting or breaking, the brackets holding sections together getting too banged up to function, small tears in the fabric), but we've been managing to fix the problems ourselves as they arise. Last year, for the first time in my life, I paid for professional in-home steam cleaning for the thing, which was about $200 but made it looks (and feel, and smell) much newer. I figure it's a little more than halfway through its lifespan, and it's not built well enough to pay for it to be reupholstered.

This feels like the sweet spot for me: we were able to test it for comfort in-person, the cost was reasonable but a bit above the cheapest, it was new (so no cat pee or dander or allergens), and it could feasibly last 15-ish years with good maintenance.

The one thing that changes my mind and makes me think we might go for something more solid and reupholsterable next is that we're not planning on moving anymore. After years and years of renting, and switching apartments from time to time, we're in a house that we own and don't want to leave. Our Costco couch is lightweight, sectional, and not so expensive that we worried about banging it around during moves. Now that we're settled in, I could be convinced to get something more durable and more expensive, but there's no way I'd buy something without sitting in it.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:29 AM on June 14, 2017 [1 favorite]