Once upon a time, my wife and I would shop for a sofa by searching furniture ads in the paper for a great looking couch at an attractive price. Six months after the purchase we’d be complaining about how badly it had worn and why they don’t make good @$#%$ furniture anymore. Six months after that it was in a garage sale and the process would begin again. 
Now that I know the industry, the good and the bad, have toured manufacturing plants and spoken to countless CEO’s of furniture companies, I can tell you what to look for and how to avoid some serious mistakes. Your sofa may be one of the most important purchases you make for your home. It’s where you spend time with family and friends, entertain clients or the boss, and it says something about your taste and style. So buy well. Some people spend more on a night on the town than a sofa they will own for an average of seven to ten years, longer if they buy traditional looking furniture.
Keep in mind that your options are endless. Most good sofas are made to order, so you get to choose your style, fabric, pillows, seat cushions, back cushions, feet finish, or whether or not you want it skirted. Or, maybe you want nails, fringe, contrast welt, or, heck, monogrammed throw pillows. Have fun, and buy what you love. Just remember, custom does not have to mean expensive.
Tip number one is so ridiculous that I have reservations in telling you in fear it will hurt my credibility in your eyes and make you think the rest of this post is not worth reading. But believe me when I tell you that this blunder has happened to a lot more people than you think. Here it is. Ready? Measure the doors or openings through which the sofa you are buying is going to have to pass in order to get into the room you want. If you ever visit a friend’s house and wonder why the sofa in the basement is nicer than the one in the living room, it miiiiight just be they bought it without measuring the doorway. 
Tip number two has a lot more substance so I can recover a little respect. Make a scale drawing of your room. Include windows, doors, openings to other rooms, and typical paths of foot traffic. Add overall measurements and especially the measurements of spaces you are considering placing your sofa. If you have a newer home here in suburban Atlanta, that cute little 84” sofa you saw at the furniture store may be way too small for the room. Note the height of the ceiling. Ceilings open to the second level might make you consider a sofa with a higher back We’ve had more than one client who bought a sectional off a random furniture store floor only to find out they needed it to be left facing rather than right. Those go to the basement, too. Thank God for basements. I have one friend who was too stubborn to put his mistake in the basement, er, terrace level, so his leather sectional sits crookedly in his living room, sort of blocking an entrance and preventing access to some of the built in cabinets…but what a deal! Buying a sofa that fits the scale of the room is important for the overall look and feel but if you are extremely tall or short, you may need to be more concerned about buying the sofa to fit your personal scale and have your designer help make it work in your home. There are some tricks to making that work, but I’ve gotta keep moving.
Number three is a biggie around here in the ‘burbs where most every house is full of bouncing children. One customer told me that she needed a new sofa after finding out that her kids were jumping off the second floor loft onto her couch down below when she wasn’t looking. You do not need to wait until the kids go off to college before you have nice furniture…you need the right sofa with the right fabric or leather so you can enjoy it with your children! Here’s where I get into quality and while some of you say you don’t care about construction, I say you should. The ‘six month wonder’ sofas are plywood construction stapled or nailed together. You can sometimes lift one corner of the sofa and the other three legs will still be firmly on the ground. That should tell you something. The store selling it doesn’t care about you and you are going to be full of wrathful righteous indignation after a short while when it fails to hold its shape. Good sofa construction has a kiln dried hardwood frame and is corner blocked, glued and screwed. That rhymes, so you should remember it. The sofa will feel heavy. Trust me, manufacturers don’t have the money to put anything extra into a cheap sofa, so with a hardwood frame, heavy=good. A quality frame typically comes with a lifetime warranty.
The frame of a sofa holds the support system for the cushions. My experience is that a manufacturer that bothers to put good heavy wood into the frame is also going to give you a nice support system. Top companies use eight way hand tied springs, which I won’t bother to describe right now, but will just say they give the best consistent support and comfort. Below that are sinuous springs which are metal bands stretched across the frame to hold up the cushions, a system that can be acceptable if there are a sufficient number of bands and those bands are thick enough. Below that is a webbing system. Unless you are buying a $300 dorm room special, webbing=run away!
One note, contemporary sofas are not normally kept as long by the owner because they go out of style more quickly, therefore they can cost less and have less effort put into the frame construction and spring system, which in this case can be ok. Some designs are so sleek that there is no room for eight way hand tied springs.
A couple other things to look for are just the quality and general straightness of the stitching. Feel for nice padding on the arms and edges. If you are going to center your sofa in a room, the back of the sofa should look nice and have some substance beneath the fabric. Check it out, poke the back of a cheaper model and there won’t be anything there! That won’t be good when junior gets backed into the sofa during an imaginary swordfight.
Leather should be top or full grain if you plan to use the sofa with any regularity. You could get away with splits on a show piece in a room that doesn’t have much traffic. For more info click here. Pet owner? Consider a top grain ‘protected’ leather. It won’t show claw marks, assuming cute little Muffin is not part velociraptor.
Upholstery fabric should be durable although vanity sofas in a seldom used keeping room might allow you to go with a little more style over substance. Check to see if your fabric sample has a loose weave or has the potential to pill and if so…here kitty kitty! Most quality upholstery fabric has a ‘double rub’ rating. We call it double butt rubs. The higher the number, the more scootching it can take. 20,000 double rubs is not uncommon. We do often recommend fabric protection, but just know that it will void the manufacturers warranty on the fabric. We don’t typically worry about that because even the top lines don’t warrant the fabric for anything other than manufacturers defect. They understandably can’t be held responsible for extra wear from your cuddly St. Bernard or that time you hosted the Sumo wrestling team.
Number four is a little more perfunctory, but you will thank me in the long run. Sofa’s have two functions, style and comfort. Let’s talk about comfort. Think about how you intend to use the sofa and how your family sits. Now I am not saying that you have to hide behind the curtain and do a detailed analysis of sitting habits of your spouse and children, but it would help in choosing cushions and arm styles if you really took the time to see how your current sofa is being used. Nap sofas should have lower and softer arms. Reading sofa’s should have arms that are high enough to support your elbow when you have a book in your hand and be the right height in relation to the end table so you can comfortably place your cocktail on a coaster. Formal entertaining sofas tend to be firmer because it just isn’t right watching the boss’s wife struggle to get out of a cushy seat. I just got a funny picture in my mind…sorry. TV sofas should be deep and soft. The same sofa can sit in a variety of ways with the choice of different seat cushions. The best cushions tend to be down wrapped cores (unless you are allergic to down!) and the cores can be high density foam or actual spring units. Spring down cushions have a great feel, and yet because of the springs will regain their shape once you get up. Down cushions will be the softest but will have that sloppy look and will require a little effort to punch them into shape, yet some people love them.
Okay, so that was four main tips. I was thinking I should write five because that’s just what you do…the five best tips for buying a sofa. But really, there was a ton of info in this post. I know I made it seem harder than buying a car, but you will hopefully spend more time with your friends and family in your home than in your car, even in Atlanta. Please don’t be intimidated, just be informed, and if you have any questions you can always call or shoot me an email at johnscreek@luxemail.net.