A new couch is a fresh opportunity to upgrade the quality of comfort during all your home’s favorite pastimes. From catching up on the latest series to treating yourself to a well-deserved afternoon pick-me-up, the couch is a multi-purpose piece of furniture. However, the versatility of your couch ultimately comes down to sofa price.
While buyers often ask, “How much does a sofa cost?” the real challenge is determining how much you should spend for a particular space. There are several factors to consider, all of which our experts have compiled in this handy checklist guide. Follow along for pointers on how to make sure your new couch is the right place for your home and its needs.
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At a Glance:
How Can I Tell if a Couch is Good?
The sofa is every home’s go-to gathering spot for unwinding, and the extra time we’re spending at home only solidifies the couch as an essential part of any household. It used to be that certain seating arrangements were reserved for occasional use while others were used for everyday activities, but modern living spaces are more dynamic than ever. At the drop of a hat, living spaces can go from a place to enjoy entertainment to a makeshift spot for e-learning.
Between the living room, a media space, and a recreation area, each of your home’s unique quarters comes with specific needs, including durability, comfort, and seating capacity. Overall, the price of a sofa is a big influence on how well a particular couch will fulfill what you plan to use it for. That’s why it’s important to carefully consider the intent of your new couch in correlation to the couch price.
How much does a couch cost?
- $500–$1,000 for low-end affordable couches
- $1,000–$2,000 for mid- to high-end couches
- $2,000 and over for premium high-end couches
Couches $500–$1,000
If your aim is affordability—or you simply want to pinch some pennies—couches between $500–$1000 are a great option to consider, but they do come with a few tradeoffs.
For starters, don’t anticipate the largest selection of styles. Typically, trends that are in season and traditional couch designs are the most common aesthetics from this price range. You can also expect a catalog of virtually exclusive stationary couches with limited upholstery options, accessories, and basic coil support (if any).
These are mass-produced sofas crafted for a short lifetime of regular use or as additional seating in low-traffic areas and typically last a few years. We recommend couches in this price bracket for apartments, spare living rooms, and occasional lounging areas.
Take a look inside:
- Particle board and cardboard for frames
- Low-density seat cushions
- Inexpensive upholstery
- Simple stitching and tailoring
Recommended Couch Brands $1,000–$2,000:
✓ Behold Home
✓ Corinthian Furniture
Couches $1000–$2,000
With a couch cost between $1,000–$2,000, you can count on increased longevity, more comfort, and a wider pick of customizable fabric and accessory options, plus more styles to choose from overall. Coordinate a cohesive look with matching pillows and leg options you can personalize to match or accentuate your home’s interior design in a variety of silhouettes, from traditional to mid-century modern to contemporary.
If seating capacity is important to you, this is where you can begin to explore more seating options. Options range from standard stationary couches to sectional couches, including modular sofas and chaise longue sectionals with left-hand or right-hand configurations to perfectly fit your space.
Take a look inside:
- Frames vary between plywood, particle board, solid-wood, and even kiln-dried options
- Higher quality foam cushions, including down-filled seating options
- Upgraded coil support with either sinuous, hand-tied, or webbed suspension
- Accessory pieces that can often be customized
- Superior tailoring and fabrics than low-end couches
Recommended Couch Brands $1,000–$2,000:
✓ England Furniture
✓ Basset Furniture
Couches $2,000+
Rather than thinking of this category as the expensive couches, we encourage buyers to consider couches $2,000 and over as great investments suitable for practically any living space and purpose. While we don’t recommend purchasing a sofa simply as a staging piece, reserving these couches exclusively for special occasions is a great way of ensuring they become heirloom furniture future generations can enjoy.
Although luxury couch brands are less common than mass couch brands, seating at this price range comes in a plethora of customizable styles and offers the highest quality of materials, meaning they’re an extreme value and exquisitely comfortable. You can tell just from our inventory of stationary couches and sectional pieces priced $2,000 and over a bump in quality, comfort, and design that feel and look truly high-end.
Take a look inside:
- Many brands use kiln-dried frames, while plywood and particle board are also common
- Standard cushions are high-density material, but keep an eye out for customizable fills
- The best seating support, including 8-way hand-tied, sinuous, and webbed suspension
- Typically, accessories come standard and can be personalized
- The highest degree of fabrics (including leather) and upholstering
Recommended Couch Brands Over $2,000:
✓ Basset Furniture
✓ Aria Design
✓ Behold Home
How Can I Tell if a Couch is Good?
The sit test is just the beginning. A couch’s true craftsmanship is judged by what’s beneath the curtains. These are three considerations you should keep in mind while shopping for a new couch.
Fabric/Upholstery
Double-rubs: It’s a furniture industry term that not many buyers are aware of, but it’s your secret to purchasing a couch that withstands years of daily use. What are double-rubs? It’s a test manufacturers perform on fabrics to determine how many passes until an upholstery brushes off. Generally, furniture double-rubs register between 3,000–30,000 passes; the higher the number, the more durable an upholstery is. Stick to couches with a double-rub between 3,000–9,000 for light use, 9,000–15,000 for medium use, and 15,000–30,000 and over for heavy use in high-traffic areas.
The downside is not many manufacturers provide this information when describing a couch. But, in general, fabrics like cotton and silk have a relatively low double-rub score and are intended for light use, while synthetics and mixed upholsteries (such as a combination of rayon, cotton, and polyester) are more resistant to abrasions from everyday lounging and sitting.
Learn More: Which Upholstery is Best for Your Home?
Construction
The best couches are reinforced with durable foundations both on the bottom and the back of the frame. There might not be a signature couch frame that manufacturers use, but the spectrum of quality typically begins with cardboard and particle board on the lower end, plywood and solid wood for mid- to high-end couches, and kiln-dried frames at the top rung of the ladder.
Construction also applies the nuts and bolts too. While staples are a quick fix for affordable couches, expertly crafted sofas are held together with nails, dovetail joints, and dowels, and are often hand-crafted.
Support
Dips, grooves, and lumps in the cushions are top reasons to upgrade an old couch, but unless the replacement has sufficient support, you’re doomed to deal with the same experience. Inexpensive couches often skimp on coils in the seating for cheaper production, but quality sofas have a sturdy foundation of spring suspensions that support you and your family for years of use.
There are several types of couch suspensions on the market, with the best being 8-way hand-tied, sinuous springs, and webbing suspension.
Why Trust Us?
For us at Great American Home Store, serving the Mid-South region is more than just providing homes across Mississippi and Tennessee with the largest selection of in-stock home furnishing in the area. It’s about preserving the heritage of the families who shop at our stores with the styles, brands, and buying options suited for each household and its needs.
For us, it’s not about your budget or background. All that matters is that each one of our buyers experiences the one-of-a-kind quality and service we’ve delivered since our doors first opened in 2004. Whether it's shopping in-store or learning about our fine products from blogs like this one, we’re your local experts from communities just like yours dedicated to the spirit of the home.
Shop Sofas at Great American Home Furniture
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