The Pros and Cons of a Sleeper Sofa

A sleeper sofa is a pretty cool piece of furniture because of the way it can be used both as a couch and as a bed. I’ve owned a few of these through the years and have discovered both some pros and some cons that I will share with you in this article. Of course, everyone is going to have a different opinion about these, but I think most will agree that a hide-a-bed sleeper sofa can, on the whole, be a pretty useful addition to your apartment or home.

The first thing you’ll notice when you go to move or life a sleeper sofa is the weight. Some of these things feel like they are nailed down to the floor. Heavy doesn’t even begin to describe some of them. Since they have a rather elaborate metal framework to facilitate the fold out mechanism for the mattress, they tend to be pretty stout. This weight, on top of the wooden framework of the sofa can put these types of couches in the hundreds of pounds. Obviously, some aren’t quite as heavy as others, but most are heavy enough that you should pay to have it delivered, or at least have someone that can come and help you move it, it just isn’t practical for one person. This weight factor is the main thing on the con side of things.

A secondary con I wanted to briefly mention is that sometimes the comfort of the sleeper sofa isn’t so great. If you a get relatively inexpensive or cheap one, it will probably have a mattress that matches. We’ve all had the miserable experience of trying to sleep on one of these with that bar in the middle of our back. Pretty uncomfortable. Like most things, you get what you pay for, and a sleeper sofa is no exception. If you plan on using your hide-a-bed a lot for sleeping, make sure it has a good mattress.

With those two cons out of the way, we can now consider the up side to owning a sleeper sofa. The main thing that I like about them is the way they can be kept in the main living area and be used as a normal couch, while at the same time it can be called upon to do double duty as a bed when you have guests over. When I was a kid I remember thinking how cool it was to sleep on my grandma’s hide-a-bed. I think I was just fascinated with the way the mattress magically emerged from the couch. When I got a bit older I stayed at my aunt’s apartment and used her sleeper sofa. It was a really good one and I slept really soundly, no bar in the middle of my back keeping me up throughout the night.

Another thing you may not have thought of that is definitely on the pro side is the different configurations that manufacturers make these things in now. You can purchase a traditional sleeper sofa that looks like a normal couch, but you can also find them built in to part of a large sectional. They come in twin, double, queen, and even king sizes, though these are a lot harder to find.

If you want to save space, have a nice piece of furniture that can serve a dual function, and have a helper or two to move it around when needed, then a sleeper sofa may be just the thing for you.