Tips for buying a sofa

It ended up taking us five months to order a sofa. After several months of sitting on bean bags, I am very much looking forward to finally sitting on a sofa.

You’re probably wondering, why didn’t you order one before you moved in? Excellent question. It was mainly because of coronavirus and we collected the keys during the first peak of the pandemic in the UK and the shops weren’t open. For a while, we just monitored and waited to see if the number of daily cases would continue to decline and before we knew it, months had passed!

Having never bought a sofa before, I hadn’t realised that some sofas can take months before they are delivered! For example, the sofa we ordered from DFS will take around 10 weeks to reach the local distribution centre. Let’s hope it arrives in time for Christmas!

So, here’s the first tip! If possible, order the sofa early on! That way you’ll be nice and comfortable when you’re watching TV in the evenings.

Here’s what we did:

1. Took measurements

One of my fears was that we would buy a sofa and then find out that it doesn’t fit through the doorway on delivery day! 

Hubby found this handy guide from Habitat that he used to take the measurements. Don’t forget to take measurements of the all the doorways that the sofa will need to fit through and the stairwell if, like us, your building doesn’t have a lift. For Friends fans, remember the PIVOT scene? 

We also wanted to know roughly what size we wanted the sofa to be in our living room so we measured that too.

Tip: A great tip from a friend on visualising the size of the sofa in your room is to use some string or masking tape to create the shape of the sofa on the floor.  I found that really useful!

DFS has a room planner too and you can change the colour of the sofa to your desired choice! 

2. Looked online for ideas

We wanted to see if there were any sofas in particular that we liked the style of so we could spend less time at the shops and order quickly. We wanted to go to the shops to sit on the sofas to see how comfortable they were. Due to coronavirus, we haven’t gone to the shops apart from the supermarket for the past few months!

Worryingly, I didn’t see any styles online that I particularly liked…but luckily once we went to the shops, we found our sofa pretty quickly!

I received some great tips from a friend on buying a sofa so here’s her list:

1. Decide on a sofa colour to match your colour scheme.

2. Research the type of filling options as that impacts how firm the sofa is.

3. You can order sample swatches of the fabric.

4. Decide if you need washable covers for the sofa. 

We found out that DFS sofa fabrics aren’t designed to be washed but I saw some IKEA sofas with covers that are machine washable! You can see this information in the Product Details section.

5. For corner sofas, think carefully about whether you need a left or right hand facing one. 

Hubby and I would love a corner sofa but there’s not enough space in the flat.  I did see this useful guide for choosing a corner sofa though. 

Here are some useful links to guides and tips for buying a sofa:

• Which? How to buy a sofa: step-by-step
• Pippa Jameson Interiors: 18 top tips when buying a sofa
• Made.com: How to buy a sofa 

3. Visited the shops!

We finally went to the shops and it was such a different experience to pre COVID-19.

Luckily the sofa stores were quiet as we went first thing and there was so much hand sanitiser available. By the end of our trip, it felt like I had layers of hand sanitiser on my hands as they have it at the entrance of each store.

We ended up going to Habitat, Heals, DFS, West Elm and John Lewis.

We actually quickly found two sofas in DFS that we liked and it was great that they were on sale!

Comfort is definitely subjective and one thing we always looked out for was whether our feet could touch the floor when we were leaning back on the sofa!

We spotted that DFS currently has guaranteed Christmas delivery on certain sofas too (with up to half price)! 

Here are the two sofas that we liked:

Levi: Very comfortable and I liked the colour and fabric.

Tip: In the product information section online, you can see when the sale ends and when the after event price applies.

Tip: The DFS advisor mentioned that some sofa models have arms on the sofa that can be removable, which helps with moving the sofa into the property.

Zora: Not quite as comfortable as the Levi but we liked the look of this one just a bit more so we ended up ordering this one.

The store had the 2 seater on display and we felt that was the right size for us so we went for it!

Tip: There’s a lot of add ons that they go through with you. It’s worth reading about it before you head into the shops so you don’t end up making an impromptu additional purchase!

Tip: Don’t forget to ask whether there is a delivery charge.  When we ordered, it turns out there is a delivery charge of £69!

Quick delivery of sofas exists!

In case some readers prefer to have a sofa delivered quickly, when browsing online, I found some stores which offer quick sofa delivery so thought I would share them on here!

• John Lewis: Sofa, armchairs & footstools available within seven days. This was super exciting and I was thinking that this is just what we need. It’s a shame we didn’t find a suitable one that we liked within our budget. Whilst the delivery is speedy, there is limited choice of colours and styles.

  I was impressed that you can even get a sofa within seven days for just under £300!

• Furniture Village also offers quick delivery of certain sofas (within 28 days). In the search filters, you can filter by delivery expected in 14 or 28 days.  For me, not all of the filtered search results were quick delivery though, so be sure to check the delivery time for the specific sofa you end up selecting.

• Dunelm

• Argos

Hope you found this post useful! 

Jess