Comfort Sleepers - Reinventing Today’s Sofa Sleepers

Most of us have experienced a sofa sleeper at least once in our lives and the experience is usually quite memorable. Not that it necessarily may be a good thing however to remember. Traditional sofa sleepers have often been found to be too hard, uncomfortable and far from providing an enjoyable sleep experience overnight. Most complaints we provide about our sleeper experience tend to be, “I can feel that bar in my back” or “the springs are jabbing me in the side”.  Fortunately sleeper designs have come a long way in recent years and this article is going to take a look at a mechanism developed by Robert and Barbara Tiffany for an American manufacturer of Comfort Sleepers. It’s goal, to address and fix the issues within the sleeper industry and to build a better sleeper.

Furniture design collaboration for Robert and Barbara Tiffany began in 1976. It was in this year that they introduced flip-out convertible seating of polyurethane foam to the American public. The design was met with much success and was marketed through the Sherwood Corporation. Through the years that followed this design team has been recognized with various awards and honors for excellence in furniture design within the furniture industry. It was in 2001 that the Tiffany’s were awarded the Daphne Award for Upholstered Furniture for a convertible sofa. It was this patented and innovative new design introduced into sleeper construction that moved away from traditional sleeper construction and ushered in a new trend of more comfortable sofa sleepers that could actually now be considered as having comfort.

The Tiffany 24/7™ mechanism is quite streamlined in its approach and moves away from traditional bars and springs. The mechanism incorporates a newer design in that it utilizes space more efficiently. The Tiffany 24/7™ mechanism allows the sleeper surface to be very close to the arms and back panel of the sleeper where as older designs require more wasted space between the arms and back of the sofa in order to contain the bulkier mechanisms. This means that the Tiffany 24/7™ sleeper takes up less space than other models allowing for better use of space both in length and in width.

Another feature of the Tiffany 24/7™ mechanism is how it operates. The system is made up of three flat panel sections using no bars. Heavy duty straps on top of the front panel seat section allow for quick pull-out of the bed. The panel at the head of the sleeper actually folds into the backrest of the sofa with the other two panels resting below where the seat cushions are placed. Because of the way these panels fold into the unit there is less weight transfer from the unit making for an easier operation from sofa to bed and back again.

The mattresses used on the Tiffany 24/7™ Comfort Sleeper are a far cry from the old innerspring coil systems used on traditional sleepers. This more modern design incorporates newer foam and visco-elastic mattresses introduced as premium mattresses within the bedding industry while offering a more high-end alternative to older uncomfortable coil units. These mattresses work seamlessly with this sleep system and with the elimination of springs and bars are believed to offer better pressure relief on back and neck regions during sleep.

Sofa sleepers have long been considered a viable option for spaces that needed to double for both sitting and sleeping. Unfortunately many traditional sleepers while comfortable as a sofa were anything but as a sleeper. In recent years however, innovators such as Robert and Barbara Tiffany have rewritten how sofa sleepers are perceived and used by introducing the Tiffany 24/7™ Comfort Sleeper mechanism which helped to eliminate the bars and springs that so many disliked in conventional sleepers and introduced a better engineered mechanism and sleep surface allowing for the use of modern memory foam and visco-elastic mattresses.