New Sofa Advice

swillsy

swillsy

swillsy

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Joined
30 Oct 2011
Posts
1,278
Location
Loughborough
Hey Guys, I've had a quick google and look in my normal internet places however I'm not finding any obvious answers.

Where is the best place (value being important!) to get a sofa from at the moment, it's been a while since I had to actually buy one! I could do to DFS however I've got a feeling I'd need to haggle to get anything like a decent price.
 
DFS have always been reasonable in my experience. they've always got a sale on and dont take much haggling to get something off. especially at this time of the year.
 
Depends on what you're after and how much you want to pay - we had a 2 seat Lay-Z-Boy recliner (3k, 3 years interest free) before starting a family. My wife also breeds Persian/Exotic cats, who treat everything like a scratch post, so our next sofa was a 3 seat/chaise IKEA Ektorp for £500. It lasted us 7 years (with a couple of fabric changes, both machine washable) before we needed more room for extra bums.

Decided to go for another fabric IKEA sofa, a huge 3x4 Lidhult at £1300, as the kids are still little and there's no point paying silly amounts for something to get trashed. It's holding up surprisingly well.

Once the kids are old enough, we'll go back to leather recliners for the TV room as we miss the comfort, although they're not as easy to cuddle up on as a regular sofa.

It's easy to spend thousands, particularly when you're looking at 4 years interest free deals, but we've started seeing sofas as an almost disposable piece of furniture - buy something reasonably priced and comfy, then replace it when it looks tired. It's nice not to be too precious about where we sit, not worrying that the kids or cats are trashing something that's still being paid for...
 
@RedMogg very much a similar situation as I don't want to spend too much as I've got cats that will ruin anything nice. Exactly want to avoid paying thousands for something which will get binned in a couple of years. I've got some old recliners but its weird when people come round as they aren't comfortable unless your horizontal. I hadn't thought of IKEA though!
 
We've got a pair of Next sofas which are both around 12 years old now, and have been very pleased with them. I still much prefer their range compared with the big sofa shed places like dfs, etc, where we saw nothing we liked at all when shopping for a third sofa last year.

We wound up with a John Lewis one. It's lovely. Got it from EBay for something like £800 when list price is about £1450. It was new and not a second: I suspect the company buys up customer cancellations, as JL won't want to hold them.
 
check out older thread on next sofas, and the factory/ebay outlets they have.
Ekornes are solidly made and I would consider a 2nd hand leather sofa, and redo the the foam/dunlopillo, if necessary ... they have removable covers;
we sold on a recliner for at least 50% of new cost
 
Just go round them all until you find something you like. We replaced the suite a couple of years ago and looked in DFS, M&S, Next, SCS, Alan Ward, Furniture Village and probably a couple of others I can't remember. Most were downright uncomfortable or too low or felt cheap and nasty, we bought from Furniture Village in the end. Only other place memorable was SCS, bloody salesman pounced the second we got through the door and wouldn't leave us alone for more than about 30 seconds to even look around. Just walked out in the end - NEVER darkening their doors again.
 
I've got two SCS sofas which have just turned 5 years old.
I'd never buy from them again due to poor quality. I've had two engineers out from SCS but they did little to rectify the issues.

We live and learn!
 
I recently went with John Lewis for the new suite, although I have a chocolate brown leather sofa purchased from Tesco's a few years back.

Full credit where it's due, its been slept on and had a hard life (within reason). To this day, it still gets compliments and worn very well. I was going to part - but now found a home in the spare room.

Don't write off less obvious sellers and shop around. :)
 
We went to DFS for a basic grey fabric sofa, cost around £350/400 for a 3 seater, and they do 0% finance. The arms also dismantle from the main seat, so easy to get around a narrow hallway.
The 'Ektorp' and 'Kivik' sofas from IKEA were another consideration, the former being a bit smaller.
 
bainbridge said:
@RedMogg Seeing as the thread has been revived, are you back in leather recliners yet?
Click to expand...
Not yet - Lidhult still holding up strong, surprisingly. Wash the covers every couple of months and it looks like new (minus the odd pull from a kitten claw).

Hoping to move somewhere much bigger by the end of the year, so we'll likely put it in the second reception/snug and treat ourselves to something a bit nicer for the lounge/media room.
Happy to recommend the IKEA Lidhult though - it's not as *designer*, but it is comfy and robust. Well worth the money we paid.
 
We've ordered from Sofas and Stuff. It's been a great service so far. Found one we really liked in the showroom, went through a few fabric samples, the guy even ordered loads more for us.

Paid £69 for the access check which gets removed from your final bill. It's a small house so needed to be sure it'd get in!

Had the good news back the other day that it will fit, so order is placed now we just have to wait in our camping chairs for 10-12 weeks :p
 
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