Twenty some years ago I used to work at a business that made and delivered sofas. They've got showrooms in key large cities in North America, fancy schmancy top end stuff.<p>The factory was a real place; the frames were made of solid wood and plywood, there was a sewing floor and even one (incredibly kooky) person whose sole job was to stuff the pillows. This guy was in a little room full of feathers all day, and they'd follow him around to the cantina and bathroom like a cartoon character.. but I digress.<p>My job there for a while was to make the sofa legs -- that was a sixteen step process, and they didn't even trust me to glue the boards together, just to do the cuts and shape the pieces. Sand and stain and wax and polish, yes sir!<p>They had a dedicated delivery crew, and what the article mentions about packaging is true -- things would be blanketed and wrapped up just the right way, then tetris-ed onto the truck. Sitting shotgun on that truck and hauling sofas up stairs and through various spaces was what I did after making the legs got too boring.<p>These sofas sold for $3000 ~ $4000 and up, and that was at the break of the millennium. I think the cheapest chair they had was around $2000. I should really swing by the showroom and see how much these are now -- and whether they're still made like they used to be.
I've posted about our ~$2000 West Elm sofa that disintegrated within 2 years in a similar previous thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393399">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37393399</a><p>The whole thing is just stapled together OSB.<p>I ripped the dust cover off and added 3 new frame stretchers made from 2x8 construction lumber (and tied other loose joints back together) and its done pretty well since then:
<a href="https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3</a> (wish I'd gotten a few more pictures, but I was tired by this point). Just shocking how terrible the construction is.
When I moved to an area for work I wasn’t planning to live long-term I ended up buying the cheapest sofa in the store. I think it was around $270. After a prolonged illness I grew more and more displeased with it, to the point that I went and bought a better one after I was better. I bought from a place that advertised the inside of the sofa more than the outside. It was all about the build quality and how long it would last. Ended up coming out to around $3k if I remember correctly, but it has a lifetime warranty on everything but the cushions, and even the cushions after 6-7 years of daily use are just now only starting to get to the point of feeling like they are beginning to break in.<p>Quality can still be found, it just can’t be assumed. I think that’s the case for far too many things these days.
This article echoes something I've learned since we moved into a larger house this past summer: don't buy new furniture.†<p>We bought very nice leather couches a few years back (we have dogs, leather is the only option) and paid dearly for them. And they're great. (We looked carefully at the construction details before buying.)<p>This summer, we had some rooms we cared a lot about and others we just needed to fill in some blanks in, and we camped Facebook Marketplace looking for stuff. Pretty soon, even the living room was getting stuff we found on Facebook, at comparable levels of quality to our old "new" furniture, and at pennies on the dollar. People are simply always getting rid of good stuff, and there isn't a meaningful secondary market for it; they're just thrilled you're getting it out of their house and getting a couple bucks in the process.<p>I submit that you would end up with a better-furnished room faster, more easily, and at a fraction of the cost of high-end furniture retailers simply with Facebook Marketplace and TaskRabbit (for near-instant delivery).<p>† <i>Leastways, not if you live in a major North American metro.</i>
Everything is bad these days, not just the sofas.
1. The new switches I bought broke before the old ones, which are over 20 years old.
2. LED bulbs last less than incandescent bulbs, even with a 20-year warranty.
3. The new cell phone's screen breaks very easily, it's not like the old Nokia's.<p>And nowadays something expensive is no longer guaranteed to last.<p>This is why I value old things so much:<p>I have an old chair to work with, it's not a good chair, but it's better than anything new. I did a restoration instead of buying a new one because the new one might not last long.<p>I have a 10 year old car, I'm scared to buy a new one with the bizarre stories
about new 3 cylinder engines breaking (throwaway engines?)<p>I try to use old things as much as possible. I stopped using an old Android when SSL stopped working. It's not a matter of lack of money, it's a lack of confidence in new things.<p>The last brand that I gave some value to was Sansumg. My last cell phone... THEY FORGOT to add a piece to fix the flat cable for the on/off button. And twice the on/off button stopped working, and twice I sent it to technical assistance. The third time I opened the phone and repaired the button myself. My two Sansumg TVs break a few days after the warranty ends.<p>My sofa broke in less than two years.
I hear this a lot, but my fairly inexpensive IKEA sofa is about eight years old with no problems at all so far.<p>EDIT: Actually, in general I've found that my IKEA furniture has done pretty well (basically everything in the house is IKEA) with the sole exception of a "Lack" coffee table, whose surface is kinda disintegrating after 8 years (I think it's basically made of cardboard with a veneer...). The name should perhaps have been a warning.
The article goes on about the quality of manufacturing, which is very fair, but something that bugs me, and it seems to apply to cheap sofas as well as very expensive ones.<p>Why are so many of them just plain uncomfortable? I'm looking for one I want right now, and I have to go around a furniture shop and try each out and I reckon, maybe 1/4 of them are suitable for a place you might enjoy sitting in.<p>The high end furniture shops seem to be the worst, i've seen 4 figure sofas that are the most uncomfortable thing I ever tried. Champions of form over function.<p>My last favourite sofa was around 2500 I guess, lasted 10 years, was excellently comfortable, but was unfortunately the wrong shape for my new place, I have not found anything anywhere near as good as that one.<p>It may be my height, much furniture seems a little off to me, and it is hard in general for me to find things I'm happy with.
I just spent about $700 having new cushions made for a 50+ year old Danish Teak sofa that I inherited from my grandparents. The original cushions were long gone, but the wooden frame was still in great condition.<p>I sourced high-quality foam and wool upholstery fabric from Maharam and took those to one of the best upholsterers/furniture restorers in Los Angeles. They did a wonderful job and now I have a super-comfortable couch with many good childhood memories, that should last me another 25 years before I need to replace the cushions again.<p>Point being, get a classic old piece and restore it. It will last a lifetime.
In the Midwest, the "better" option is to buy furniture from "The Amish".<p>Parents bought a living room set, it was double what a similar set would be at the local furniture superstore, but the fabric/cushions were a new level of terrible. Basically fell apart in two years.<p>It's a great place to find wooden tables, beds, dressers, but it's all heavy (as you'd expect) and hard to move.<p>If I was buying a sofa today I would get something from Stressless.
Last time I bought a couch, a new one, it set me back $6,000. It took me the better part of eight months to find it. Solid wood. Proper joinery. Thick padding. Pig skin leather. We kept it for 20 years before giving it to some friends who had it reupholstered where I expect it will last another 20 years.<p>I used to have some expensive, but ultimately crap, book cases. Book cases are not designed by people who own a lot of books. 36" to 48" spans of fast growth pine will stretch and bow within a year or two. I designed my own book case. I went to a furniture making store. We went back and forth a few times. The biggest sticking point that took four attempts for the furniture maker to understand was where to put the fixed shelf. It does not go in the middle because that wastes space. We made it out of pine. 7' 8" tall, so that when standing it up, it will clear an 8ft ceiling in modern American homes. 22" wide shelves so they cannot flex. Fixed shelf to counteract gravity. Made specifically to carry paperback novels and similarly sized books. "Sand it three times, prime it, sand it, prime it, sand it, paint it, sand it, paint it, no I don't care that a single book case will cost $200." I bought 24 of them. Many hundreds of lineal feet of book cases. We still have them 24 years later and they are as good as new. And the paint job, because it is two layers of prime and two layers of paint, on a mirror surface, looks like you just took the item from the showroom floor.<p>I have a plywood bookcase I made to store cooking books. The cheapest plywood you can imagine from the big box store. But because of the structural design, 15 years later it still holds up without any bowing or flexing.<p>Modern furniture is absolute junk. Even the "good stuff."
About 10 years ago I went shopping at Furnitureland South, mentioned in the article. The selection was a bit overwhelming, but we picked out a solid wood bedroom set from a manufacturer in Canada. It's held up great, as has my kids' IKEA bedroom furniture.<p>I've purchased couches from West Elm, Restoration Hardware, and a few other well-known places, and they've all been disappointing. From now on I'll stick to Furnitureland and IKEA, but I don't know if I have the energy to go couch shopping at Furnitureland.
Ok, but I have no clue - either before or after reading this article - how to go about finding furniture that <i>isn't</i> junk. Truly, I can't figure it out. I've been to every furniture store in town and tried to figure it out via the internet, to no avail. For somebody who prefers to spend more money less often on actually good things that last a long time, but has neither the time nor inclination to be a hobbyist vintage store frequenter, what is one to do?
I've liked reading this blog - <a href="https://insidersguidetofurniture.com/buyers-guide-to-furniture/" rel="nofollow">https://insidersguidetofurniture.com/buyers-guide-to-furnitu...</a> and basically what it comes down to is most modern cushioning will fail in five years or so.<p>You need 2.5 density foam or higher, or you need a "uncushioned" style couch.
The cookie popup of this site is some dark design to behold, I have to say. You need to disable every single "goal" one by one - once you have figured out this is the least worst option. You can otherwise disable the 1400 partners one by one.<p>This is completely illegal in Europe and I think it's illegal to serve this UI to an EU IP, even for non-EU websites.<p>Anyway, who cares, it's almost funny what lengths they go to to get you to accept cookies.
This article seems to make it an American (US) thing, but I can assure you the sofas here in Argentina are mostly shit. If you look under the hood, they are every bit as crap or worse than described in TFA.<p>It's not "cheap imports" either, I don't think sofas here are imported. They are made to order in my country. They are just garbage.<p>I'm talking about midrange and even higher priced sofas. If you see the armature, it's mostly crap wood with "lots of staples" as mentioned. And a fancy cover, of course.
Around 5 years ago I tore down my sectional sofa to the sticks and completely rebuilt it. This was around 5 years old at the time, and was a cheap sectional (at most $600, possibly less, I don't recall), my wife convinced me to go cheap because "the kids will destroy anything we get".<p>I will agree with the upholstery person in this article: it's not going to be worth it to pay someone to do it. I ended up reupholstering ours for around $500, but that's because I did all the labor myself. An amazing amount of work.<p>It was made with a lot of OSB, some of the most curved pine I've ever seen, and lots and lots of staples.<p>I fixed the frame by adding a variety of supports and glue and screws. The frame went from being barely sufficient to quite solid. I doubled the webbing and springs, and completely rebuilt the cushions. To an extent I used the existing fabric as the patterns for the new fabric, except: my wife wanted the cushions to have piping (that was a huge effort), and originally it had the back cushions built in and stuffed with polyfill, but I wanted to make them removable so I had to redesign the back and custom design the cushions.<p>The biggest mistakes I made were the foam I used for the cushions was way too firm. If I were to redo it I would do something like a 3 layer: firm, medium, maybe latex or low density memory foam. I'd also probably have used a leather considering all the effort I put in, largely to keep the cats at bay.<p>The real down side is that we're thinking of getting rid of it because it's really too big for our space, and unless I redo the cushions it's way too firm to use without additional pillows. But, despite all the work I put into it, I'd be willing to bet that we could't sell it, and probably couldn't give it away (selling furniture on craigslist is so frustrating).<p>End result: <a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/Q8DMxQU7L9AggCBDA" rel="nofollow">https://photos.app.goo.gl/Q8DMxQU7L9AggCBDA</a> Starting reassembly: <a href="https://photos.app.goo.gl/rQRJfmYmSLew3rSN8" rel="nofollow">https://photos.app.goo.gl/rQRJfmYmSLew3rSN8</a>
I got a Lovesac Sactional after using a couch for years that was a handme down of a handmedown. I like it but it was not cheap (~4.5k). The modular nature fits our lifestyle so I'm willing to pay the premium. Having had to move a couch multiple times, I'm looking forward to just being able to break this one up into sections and take it out the door.<p>They've got an ingenious model from a profit perspective as well. Since you can't charge subscriptions for stuff like that, they can sell you pieces of a Sactional and then you can get more pieces as the space you live in gets bigger or your life style changes. They also sell additional covers so if you get bored of the previous ones, you can change the color without getting a new couch (though it is not easy to get them on and off).<p>My advice, wait until it's on sale. They regularly go for sale from 15-20%. If you aren't fussy about the type, Costco usually has them too.
The highest quality furniture can be found in antique stores or estate sales. Perhaps it's just me but my default has always been to buy old things with the idea that, if they've lasted this long, they'll probably last longer. I've always felt it was lower risk. But please don't all rush to buy old things; because I like the low prices too.
The part about springs is interesting because all the sofas I've owned in the past decade have used foam, and I don't miss springs... When they are new maybe it's ok, but over time they wear out and the sofa becomes really noisy and uncomfortable as they aren't even. The same thing with mattresses, I'm never buying a sprung mattress again.
I hate buying furniture because it's easy to tell that most of what's out there is utter junk, but not very easy to figure out what's at least decent but isn't super expensive. Or what's expensive but not just marked up.
The best way to acquire a quality sofa is to purchase a used one made by a furniture maker known to create high quality pieces. It requires a bit of research. You need to figure out which builders around you produced excellent furniture 50 or more years ago. In the USA, Dunbar is an example. Buy an old Dunbar sofa from the 1950s and reupholster it. It will easily last another 100 years.
Because people don't want to pay for good plywood, proper webbing, and quality fabrics. Real furniture weighs a lot, and doesn't make sense to ship around the planet.<p>Thus, people get foam, OSB, and cardboard in a fake canvas bag.<p>Good upholsterers are hard to find, often eccentrics, and usually will not tolerate cheapskates. If you own something pricey like a boat or restaurant, than most are happy to get something that will last. Even a few yards of period correct fabrics or leather is more expensive than the typical Ikea living room set.<p>One needs to learn these things if you want to stay married. lol =)
Next time you stay at a mid-range or better hotel, notice the furniture. They don't but junk because in the long run it never lasts, and whose going to pay for a nice hotel room with tacky furniture?<p>A couple of months ago, we stayed in a newer Holiday Inn Express. The bed and cabinets were very nice and well built.
> ...modern consumers "are buying a couch online that looks four times as good, costs two times the price, and is made twenty times more poorly."<p>My friend had an Article couch and after a handful of months it was so uncomfortable it was as if the stuffing somehow just vanished.<p>And yet when I look around the net all I can see are glowing reviews of Article couches all over :\
We got a couple of secondhand ex-living room sofas very cheap. IKEA. Full leather, looked nice and an absolute dream to sit and lie on, just exactly the right combination of firm and soft.<p>These were for the kid areas. They had reduced the previous (IKEA Ektorp) sofas to rubble over a couple of years. These new ones didn't last long at all. The suspension underneath the cushions is criss-crossed webbing in a softwood frame. Well you can imagine, a 90lb child jumping on that, the forces that develop. And then the frame breaks at the front. And there's nothing structural at the front of the sofa, just some 1/4" thick fiberboard, to anchor replacement frame material to so you can't really fix it.<p>Oh well. One of them now has solid plywood - very well fastened to what structural elements are available - so it's now very firm but the kids don't care. The other, I had the inspiration of mounting the plywood lower and putting another layer of cushioning in there (leftover seat cushions from the demolished Ektorp sofas). That's actually pretty good.<p>But without rambunctious kids, these sofas, which were already 10-15 years old, would have lasted quite a while longer. It's wizardly, the seating comfort they got out of such simple and cheap materials.
Made the mistake of buying a couch off Wayfair for a little nook in my office. It lasted a year before I got rid of it. Never again. Couches really are one of those areas where you get what you pay for. With the possible exception of Ikea. Got an Ikea couch for my 10 year old's room and its holding up remarkably well.
We bought some sofas secondhand when moving into our first home. They were great, and they held up well for many years. But ultimately we sold them and bought new ones because we didn't know if they had the fire-retardant chemicals that used to be mandated in CA (until they were discovered to be carcinogenic). The new sofa (from Costco) seems good but the sofa chairs (from Wayfair) are not so good.<p>It seems like the frame in the back has some sort of support that is made out of a material that is closer to cardboard than wood. When our kids run into it, the back of the chair deforms a bit and has to be bent back. I have no idea why the frame of a chair would be made out of something so weak. I expect we'll have to replace them in 5 years or so, and we'll aim for something more old-school.
Sofa bases seems to be getting shitter and shitter as manufactures value engineer with increasingly more low quality engineered wood. At this point my next sofa frame is going to be sturdy metal outdoor furniture. I've also seen a few tiktok sponcon videos of sofas with industrial plastic molded frame, like industrial pallets. Probably not enviromentally friendly, but seems durable.<p>Seems like Sofas are last to make the economical steel channel furniture jump, you can get tons of sturdy/durable bedframes for like $100 shipped on Amazon. Most cheap metal futon frames also last forever if it wasn't for the moving mechanical components. I'd like to see more steel + bolt sofas.
Not a sofa; but I'm sitting in an Ecornes Stressless recliner.<p>It's the best piece of furniture I've ever bought. It's made from "engineered wood", covered in quite good leather; I should have chosen a lower grade of leather, because hide isn't as easy to look after as some of the lower-grade leathers.<p>FTR, I've bought sofas and armchairs from artisan/craftsman makers, from junk shops, and I've also bought cheap disposable shit. After the Stressless, my best buys were all from junk shops. But this Stressless, I more-or-less live in it.
Built my own sofa. Fabric from JOANN, foam from a shitty IKEA thing thrown on the street, some plywood and pine from Home Depot, hardware, staples. Cost me $75. It's comfy and I can lay on it or sit on it. What the fuck about this is supposed to cost >$1,000, I have no idea. Are they stuffing sofas with live minks or something? It's just wood, bolts, foam and fabric.<p>For cushions I already had some, but you can easily make them with more JOANN fabric and a big box of poly stuffing. Extremely basic sewing skills and a pair of scissors are all you need.<p>Give a man a fish...
The key aspect that allows the businesses to get away with this is the buying frequency. You might buy a couch once every 10 years so it's very difficult to judge quality. Whereas with something like coffee beans I'm buying it every week so I have 52 opportunities every year to analyze the quality and change brand. The couch seller knows you probably won't make a repeat purchase so it's all about marketing tricks.
I'm generally very skeptical of brand/store loyalty type arguments, but lately I've found that in the US, Macy's furniture is still good value for good quality. I've had to completely furnish a few rooms over the last couple of years and looked at all the usual, e.g.: costco, ikea, wayfair, jordan's, etc., as well as expensive hand-made local shops, and I keep ending up at Macy's in the end.
After being burned by this many times, finally got a couple Chesterfield style sofas from Costco about 4 years ago and everything about them has been rock solid. And they were about $700 each.<p>I later wanted something matching for a different room - but the problem is, the Costco furniture changes seemingly every day and you never see the same thing again.
Soon the cheapest Ikea sofa I could find in 2015 (about 200 $) has lasted me a decade. Sure, the cover worn is worn out and covered with another textile for that reason, but it's still usable. I can sit on it and watch my TV, which is even older.<p>Easiest way to find happiness in material quality of life is to lower one's standards.
Pro tip: Estate sales.<p>Many very good, long-lasting pieces of furniture come on the estate market for very cheap because a) no one wants to move the giant solid-wood china cabinet, or b) you can get a $15 sofa or table mailed to you, why would you want an ugly flower pattern on something that has already outlasted one owner?<p>Look for Thomasville, Drexel, or similar from the 1950s to the 1980s. Lots of midcentury modern, if you like that sort of thing, but plenty of other designs.<p>I'm writing this on a desk (currently missing the leather insert in the top) made of solid pecan. We got a 10' china cabinet, dining table that seats 12, and chairs for $300 a while back.<p>Unfortunately, I haven't seen stackable bookshelves from the 30s-60s lately and they were getting somewhat expensive, which puts a crimp on my obsession to decorate entirely with books.
They are bad because they don't cost 10-15k. Human bodies are difficult. They weigh quite a bit and often move about. Put multiples of them onto the object then stresses and strains will add up. Want that object to look cool, perform perfectly for multiples of years then you have a challenge!
If you're looking to reupholster, I've had great luck with <a href="https://www.slipcovershop.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.slipcovershop.com/</a>. They make custom slipcovers and sell affordable cloth by the yard that you can use to easily reupholster stuff yourself if the shape is not too complex.<p>Other than that, I wish this article went less into things that don't matter (properly sized brackets are no worse, and sometimes better, than joinery, etc.) and more into the ergonomics, types of foam and other materials that actually matter. Like, how do I tell how long a cushion filling or fabric will last, or tell if there are springs that will sag without taking it apart.
I just bought a sofa 6 months ago. It was my first time buying a big piece of furniture from a proper furniture store. It's (allegedly) American made. It is one of those pull-out queen bed convertible things, and that part is fantastic. The couch is nearly identical to the pull-out-bed couches I see in hotels. The only difference is the fabric. The bed mechanism is rock solid, but the couch itself is creaky and the cushions are already noticeably deformed. It's like they wrapped a great, tried-and-true bed mechanism inside a much shittier couch. It's clearly a step above Wayfair detritus, and I certainly didn't break the bank to get it, but I'm still a little disappointed.
I have 3 sofas and all of them were free. One is from a neighbor and the other two from the Buy Nothing group on Facebook. I have never been able to convince myself that any piece of furniture is worth the thousands of dollars that an average couch costs. The one exception being the bed (which is the actual most important piece of furniture anyone owns).<p>What truly baffles me is how, in my middle-class suburban hometown, all of these families were able to furnish their massive 3-5 bedroom homes. Many families, including my own, would have a living room that was mostly for show (because hanging out happened in the den/TV room) yet contained thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of furniture.
Has anyone found good options that are between stapled together cardboard with cheap foam that will fail in a couple years or $5000 and up designer brands? I love buying high quality goods that will last a lifetime but who has $5k for a couch/sofa?
When my mother was younger she used to reupholster furniture as a hobby.<p>Older, antique furniture was much easier to work with and most newer furniture was practically impossible to reupholster at all.<p>I was pretty easy to see the difference once the bones were exposed.
In the UK I would thoroughly recommend these guys: <a href="http://www.ecosofa.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ecosofa.co.uk/</a><p>We picked them because they were one of very few UK suppliers who could supply a sofa that's not covered in toxic flame retardants (the UK has kept some very dubious legislation in place on this issue, I think mainly because the industry lobbies for it as a protectionist measure).<p>The sofa we bought was on the expensive side, but not ridiculous. It's also seems beautifully made in general, and was carefully delivered by the firm themselves, who spent about half an hour manouevring it in.
I have a cheap sofa today made of the sawdust and glue. I had “good” sofas before made of hardwood. They both feel fine under your butt and get wrecked by the cat before long. The new one comes apart in pieces so one person can easily move it in or out of a doorway or stairwell. Maybe the “joinery” is worse but who cares? It does the job and is easier to deal with, and that’s probably why these things have replaced the old beasts. Plus if you are interested in things like the joinery under your upholstered furniture there are still people who will cater to that for a premium you’d justify somehow.
This is a good dig into changes in design and manufacturing trends, which makes sense for Dwell, but I suspect we'd see more people complaining about their furniture quality these days even without manufacturing changes because many people are like 50% heavier than the people in sitting in couches 50 years ago -- and often more likely to collapse into a sofa than to set themselves down upon it.<p>So it's actually kind of a two sided loss in quality: the designs are flimsier even while the engineering requirements have become more demanding.
This only makes sense when upholsterers dont cost more than buying an entirely new sofa. My family used to reupholster furniture every 5 years and it was cheap because my mother had an interior design firm and got very good rates.<p>I tried the same here in the US with some high end Scandinavian furniture ($5k), the quote was up to 1x what I originally paid. In the end it made sense to just buy new again.<p>The cost of labor of where you reside has a significant effect on whether you purchase another 'junk' piece of furniture.
Sometimes there's a lowest common denominator that puts pressure on everyone else to reduce quality & value, especially gradually over the long run.<p>When it comes to sofas there's a less common low, and that's "model home" furniture.<p>These upholstered representations look just like the real thing but they are not counterfeits, merely imitations of what it would look like if the model home were to be equipped with actual furniture where its usefulness was a consideration.<p>Occasionally appearing on the second-hand market so caveat emptor.
I've had a two-seat sofa from Living Spaces since.... 2017 and it's held up really well. Even the cushions have no wear despite my dog loving "digging" into them (basically scratching for a while digging an imaginary hole). I think this sofa was like $800 plus tax/delivery but I sit on it every day and it's held up really well, especially through one move.<p>I think there's probably just quality:price tiers and mine happens to be in the economical but decent quality range.
I'd like a sofa that:<p>- is comfortable<p>- isn't full of fire retardant chemicals which turn out to be cancerous right after the warranty expires<p>- for less than $10k.<p>Pretty sure that means I'm going to have to learn how to sew.
One of the draws of the DTC model (and IKEA) is the apparently heavily commission-based pay structure of the sales staff of most brick-and-mortar furniture stores.
In the mid 80s I had a sofa and wing-back chair made by a little factory called Bader and Fox(?) in Portland OR. I went to the factory (the two owners were the only ones there) and picked out fabric/style/etc with some special instruction about the angle of the arms and stiffness of the stuffings. Cost about $1600.<p>Best furniture ever. Carted across the country twice. I still use both pieces every day. They've been reupholstered once.
I know I'm going to sound like an old person shouting about how "they don't make'm like they used to", but it's honestly true. This isn't just sofas - it's almost everything. Businesses know that it's far cheaper to make something <i>look</i> high quality than to actually make it high quality. And if you can make it <i>seem</i> expensive, then you can charge expensive prices for it.
Sofas and rugs are inherently labor-intensive things to make well, where quality materials make a huge difference. I grew up with real wool-silk rugs my parents brought over from old country, or my dad bought on work trips to Afghanistan or Pakistan. I never gave them a second thought until I bought my own house and tried to furnish it. What I had thought were just regular rugs would cost $5,000+ in America.
I have nothing to contribute but this video from comedian Rob Paravonian It's probably 20+ years old, but it frequently pops into my mind when I think about the apartments I lived in during my 20s. The materials were shoddy, but the price was right!<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8mV8BvVzYA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8mV8BvVzYA</a>
This is a major issue we have found while building <a href="https://www.unwraplife.co/" rel="nofollow">https://www.unwraplife.co/</a>.<p>We only list brands that are A) plastic-free and B) use non-toxic materials.<p>The list of large-ish brands that fit those specifications can be counted on one hand.<p>The industry is rife with corner cutting, greenwashing, and lack of disclosure.
Bought an Ikea particle board couch back in 2017 and it's still going strong despite heavy use by two fat people and 3 moves where it was dis/re-assembled. I recently added a support to the armrest where the unbacked fiberboard had caved in a bit.<p>Sure, quality furniture is great but I'll wait until we settle down. For now, no regrets.
When we moved to the US with two babies last year it was very important for us to buy non-toxic furniture. We ended up buying a sofa and chairs from Medley. Their products are made in LA out of wood and are free of formaldehyde, flame retardants, and PFAS. It's been only a year but it looks like the furniture is going to last.
My wife and I spent a couple grand on a "leather" couch about 5 years ago.<p>A little over a year ago the "leather" started developing holes in it from wear all over the place. The so called leather is literally paper thin and bonded to some low quality fabric.<p>I've never had this sort of problem with a couch before. It's very frustrating.
I look through the antiques subreddit often and lots of really nice quality furniture is hardly valued now because it's out of style. A good quality sofa should be able to be re-foamed and fabriced forever but I think we're all just too mindset on cheap and disposable since that's the easiest route.
The funny thing is someone told me this in an IRC channel about 20 years ago, a full decade before I'd even be in a position to buy my own sofa. Can't remember which channel it was, certainly wasn't a sofa-related channel, probably Linux related. I've never forgotten it for some reason.
FYI, if you're in or near Los Angeles and have a budget, I can strongly recommend <a href="https://www.thejonesesla.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thejonesesla.com/</a><p>Got a custom from them and (partly because I asked) it's crazy sturdy. Cost a lot, and I got what I paid for :D
When my grandma passed away I took the sofa because I was a poor student in need of a sofa.
After about 10 years of daily use I started to notice some of the cushions sagging. Asked the family when she bought the couch and it predates my birth by about 10 years. Talk about quality.
I have a leather Benchmade Modern couch that has lasted half a decade no problem now. I think they switched facilities/materials at one point though ..but I got grandfathered into the real wood, better facility when I got my second couch (I called and asked)
The article seems to exaggerate a bit, because neither in 2024, nor in 2004, would I have expected a $1,200 couch to be 'well-made'. (Although I wouldn't expect either one to actually fall apart in two years of use.)<p>This isn't exactly a novel problem.
Perhaps this Wirecutter article can help: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/guides/buying-a-sofa/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/guides/buying-a-sofa/</a>
Ashley has a fair amount of their furniture made in North Carolina. It's obviously not at the same quality level as something like a Stickley, but if you want US-made furniture from a mainstream brand, they're a good choice.
Is there "open hardware" in this space? Someone was selling laser-cut frames and sofas that you assemble, which made me wonder if anyone has gone whole-hog and created reasonable open designs for laser-cut, diy sofas.
A while back I moved half way across the country, the only two pieces of furniture I took with me were the standing desk and a leather sofa. Cost a lot to have them moved.<p>Whatever else goes on in my life, I've got that sofa problem handled.
Because sofas that last are heavy and were meant for when people didn’t move out of the same estate for generations.<p>Now people move every few years. And it’s hard to justify buying fancy furniture in a place you aren’t staying for long time.
People aren't willing to pay thousands for furniture anymore.<p>My Rowe furniture sofa is 21 years old now and sits as if it was new. If I have a problem, I'll get it reupholstered or just order a new cushion from the manufacturer.
Most are cheap junk bought sight unseen. My stressless couches are built from real wood, full grain leather, etc... My eames chair likewise. But you're adding a 5-10x multiplyer to furniture costs for that quality.
Most people buy IKEA sawdust or are low information consumers, and the market responds accordingly. As such, people don't buy fine furniture or understand how to discern quality in a specific durable good.
I wish I could find a sofa that was designed for repairability. The only thing that ever wears out is the cushioning under the seat but I've never been able to find someone who offers repair services.
I have always found that the best sofas are the ones you least expect. Never a rich person's big fancy sofa but some girlfriend's, who lives in her tiny apartment, beat up, sofa, for example.
Second hand sofa market is surprisingly good in all cities ai lived in (Europe) You can get great stuff for less than 100eur. Good luck figuring out there transport and cleaning though.
We need an app to design your own sofa. When done order the parts precut with a drawing and instruction videos.<p>You also have to make a selfie so that you can see yourself construct it in the videos.
in my experience when it comes to sofas the old "buy cheap buy twice" holds true. there are reputable brands such as ligne roset for example. they are pricey bit if you can commit to buying and owning for > 15 years. owning a clam and a togo for more than ten years and the are basically like new. foam & fabric. i understand this might unaffordable to a lot of people but buying second hand can be a great deal on high end sofas.
And why are the cushions so freaking soft? Sure you don't want your back to perch on lumber but you don't want to sag inside like an embryo, either.
What the hell, share my data with them and 1400 parters to read this, an No easy way to just say “Fuck No”. This kind of site design should be illegal.
I bought a sub $700 leather coach from Costco in 2007. It lasted 6 moves and 16 years until my kids finally found its weak point (leather seams at the cushioning and back) playing “the floor is lava.” Honestly, it’s probably repairable even after that, but the wife wanted new furniture anyways.<p>I haven’t had to replace any of the relatively cheap stuff I’ve gotten from cost plus world market over a decade.<p>I might just be lucky or special, but I don’t think cheaper furniture is necessarily bad or throwaway. I’m not sure what the trick is. We’ve tended to buy robust looking furniture— solid wood dining table, welded metal dining chairs, a plush and thick sofa. Frankly, our stuff looked very pedestrian compared to some of our friends, but it has lasted.
Yup. A few years ago I bought a $1500 sofa from I think BluDot? It was trash. It rocked back and forth on a flat, level floor because the legs weren't all the same length. One of the legs was already cracked when it was delivered (independent from the different lengths problem). And the cushions were absurdly hard, but also too soft. I didn't take the cushions apart to see what was going in there but it felt like you were sitting on a wooden board with a way-too-soft spring underneath. They offered a 10-day return policy, and what do you know, when I requested a return on day 2 and then again on day 5 and then again days 6,7,8,9,10,11 ... they just didn't respond, until eventually like a month later I managed to get someone on the phone and they told me the 10day window had already elapsed so no backsies. When I left a bunch of 1star angry reviews calling them a fraud on every website I could think of, someone hired some mover-on-demand service and an old minivan showed up at my house to take it away. The mover didn't know where they were supposed to take it to. I gave them the store address where I bought it. What an absolute trash company.<p>Years later I spent $3500 on a sofa from Design Within Reach and it's terrific.
I dunno, but "design" sofas aren't that bad. Of course, you pay for this. My modular Cor Trio sofa has a list price of 6,500€ in the configuration I own. See [1] for a simpler one.<p>One contributing factor is the fabric you choose. But the biggest one is labor. The wooden construction uses only solid wood too but that is the least cost either way.<p>What I did when buying it is that I made a list of all design furniture shops in Berlin that sold Cor.<p>Then I drove to each of them and asked: this is my best price from your competitors. What is yours? In the end I actually paid 4,500€. I also learned the margin is ~45% of the list price for the shop.<p>Which gives you an idea about material and labor prices when you produce in Europe. I.e. Cor sells this to the shop for around 3k€. That already includes their margin. I would think producing this has costs of at least 50% of that attached. I.e. 1.5k€ for labor and materials.<p>I just started helping a friend re-produce an old design classic of his [2] as WFH has made requests for it spike. It's not a sofa, strictly speaking, but the changes in costs probably make it worth mentioning them in this context.<p>When we produced the first series, ca. 2004, we had material, CNC and labor costs of around 1,000€. Without upholstery. Upholstery varies greatly depending on finish. Different fabrics and leathers have very different prices and labor costs attached.<p>We are now looking at over 4k€ for labor and wood (it's made of Ceiba which is difficulty to source). I.e. we have a ~300% raise in production costs over 20 years in Europe (not counting upholstery!).<p>If we wanted to keep the previous price, we needed to switch to cheaper wood and move production outside of Europe. At the moment we are just considering targeting a wealthier clientele. Not everyone has this luxury though.<p>I guess I'm saying I dunno how much these factors play a role in the enshittification of sofas everywhere. But they probably do ... :]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.prooffice.de/shop/cor-trio-sofa.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.prooffice.de/shop/cor-trio-sofa.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.saschaulber.com/shop/coffy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.saschaulber.com/shop/coffy/</a>
OT:<p>I can’t read the site due to a massive “We value your privacy” pop up informing me about the <i>1532</i> data-harvesting “partners” they sell information to, and there’s only “Allow All” button accessible (which is illegal by GDPR).<p>They really value my privacy, for its resale value.
I dream of an inflatable couch. Bear with me. It could be well designed and high quality. And with a nice slipcover.<p>There is somebody who makes them but for the life of me I can't recall who.<p>They come with a built-in compressor.
>There are absolutely sturdy, beautifully made sofas constructed in the United States. There are custom designer pieces made here or in France or Italy or Scandinavia, which tend to be prohibitively expensive for the masses. But low- and mid-priced sofas are a relatively new phenomenon, and, frankly, they often suck.<p>But do they suck less than not having a sofa at all? I am a several-time-over beneficiary of cheap made-in-southeast-asia sofas. Shipped in a fridge-sized box right to my doorstep, assembled (by me) in ~15min, and perfectly serviceable. Is it up to the same quality level as a $5000 made-in-USA solid wood hand-woven twine-joinery (etc etc) masterpiece? No, but I couldn't have afforded that kind of sofa. And it didn't have to be hand-packed by a furniture transportation expert, and it didn't weigh 800 lbs.<p>I don't really see the "loser" here exactly - broke grad students, college kids, people in rural areas, and starving artists win; workers in developing countries win (the furniture factory sure beats the rice paddies); Instagram-sofa tech bros win. And gilded solid wood sofa makers can always market to the rich, who can afford to spend several months' worth of my rent cost on a piece of furniture.
...not to mention furniture stores seem to keep no inventory, so you get it 6-8 weeks after you buy because that's how it takes them to build and ship your new couch
This article about about sofas opens with "The most important piece of furniture in your home..."<p>Did anyone else find this weird / funny?<p>Like, just off the top of my head I'd put my bed at the top of my list, waaaay ahead of a sofa. Next might be the desk & chair I WFH at, and then it goes on from there.<p>I get that the article wants to build engagement by "raising the stakes", but c'mon. Sofas are not that important :)
Lots of people suggesting buying second-hand because the old stuff is made better - and it really is. The problem with thrifting is that everyone is doing it. The word is out. Price goes up and supply dwindles.<p>Same situation with buying used cars. New cars suck. You can't work on them yourself and they have terrible UX. So people started only looking for used. Except the used prices skyrocketed to match supply & demand.<p>We can't keep this up. We can't all keep thrifting. Everyone knows it's better, everyone is on the prowl, and everyone has easier access to buyers, thanks to the internet.
"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption.<p>I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal topics. It's one of those things where once you start noticing it, it just gets cringier and cringier.<p>Not everyone lives in sitcoms or spends all their free time watching TV...<p>The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. And even then we're usually doing other things than just lazing about.
Glad to hear everyone agrees that most couches are pretty subpar. I bought $10,000 worth of stuff from a high end furniture place because the French girl started working there. Then that boat got stuck in the Suez Canal, the shipping container finally arrived months late, and it was empty. So I got a full refund and she still got her huge commission, and after reading this the couch probably sucked.