How I Chose My New Couch (my top considerations and priorities)

After much research, I finally bought a new couch (actually, it’s a loveseat!) we’re excited about. I know many of you have been on the hunt for one, too. It’s not always easy to make a decision, so I thought I would share a little of my thought process and which one we chose in case it helps someone else.

If you missed the backstory on why I needed a new sofa, you can read what happened in this post.

Here is the couch we chose (in the mist performance double stripe fabric).

We had several requirements and preferences that made finding the right sofa a little extra challenging. 🙂

Here are some questions and considerations I look for and what helped us to make our sofa decision (I’ll share more later, too!):

• Quality: This is our forever home and the first thing you see when you walk in, so it was worth it to me to find one we will love. I prefer to buy quality furniture that we can keep for a long time. For health reasons I hoped to find one that was Greenguard certified (tested to be free of a lot of chemicals).
• New or Secondhand: I was open to buying one secondhand if I had found one that met our requirements in the short period of time I had to look. I did see a lovely one on FB marketplace but alas, it was much too big for our little space. It’s always worth looking though!
• In Person or Online Shopping: It was far more convenient for me to shop online. I wish we lived where there are lots of in person places to look for new or secondhand. It is a risk to buy online, so I carefully read reviews and felt even better if I had a positive past experience with the brand. And I carefully looked at every detail of dimensions and fabric etc to be sure it would be what we expected.
• Size: The couch needed to be 61 inches wide (to be able to walk all around it comfortably in the small space we had for it). That’s not a very common size, but anything else would’ve been way too big!

• Focal Point or Supporting Role: Some couches look good sitting against a wall or will be in supportive role, but in our space, the couch floats in the middle of the whole main floor. That makes it feel more like a focal point, so the style matters even more.
• Style and Shape: Because of where it sits as well as my own style preferences, I wanted it to have an interesting but classic shape and exposed legs. I felt that would feel less like a barrier in the middle of the room and more of a style setter. It needed to look good from all sides.
• Fabric and Color: I haven’t bought any furniture that it had to coordinate with, but it did need to look good with our paint colors since we just painted and we love the colors. As much as I’ve loved my past neutral or white couches in the past, I felt like a print or soft color would work better in this space and still fit with my style.

  I thought about various fabrics, even some lovely velvets that would make a room extra cozy, but I decided to go with one that felt like a summer beach house (since this is a beach house!). In the fall and winter I’ll pair it will cozy colors and textures. It’ll be fun to play around with new combinations and moods in every season!

  Also I wanted it to be a fairly easy to care for durable fabric because of puppies and babies. No fabric lasts forever but I think slipcovers are nice! I knew I could always have some made years down the road, so I decided that wasn’t a deal breaker for me.

• Cushion Styles: I looked at all options. I wasn’t going to be as picky about this because we had so many other must-haves, but there are different style preferences. Do you want down filled cushions / foam or no cushions, back cushions or solid back, removable or two sided cushions, one bench seat or two/three seat cushions? There are pros and cons for all of them! A plus of no back cushions is dogs can’t squish them or throw them on the floor. 🙂 The down filled are so comfy, but they will flatten out and you have to fluff them periodically. We chose a bench style cushion with down and I’m sure we’ll be happy with that! I really love a sink in cozy couch.
• Price: Quality and customizable couches can be very expensive, so if you are going to get one, you will want to love everything about them. I found options I liked under $3,000 (like this one) but in the end with the size, style, specifications and exact customizations I wanted, it became clear I was going to spend more. Fortunately I was getting a smaller sofa and not a sectional ha, plus we don’t need a lot of furniture in this house so this one investment felt worth it. I have a trade discount at some places, so that gave me a buffer to extend my budget, which helped.

I can’t wait for it to arrive! It’ll unfortunately be a long wait. But in the meantime, I am excited to think about what else we may want to use in the room. I’ll share some mood boards for my overall inspiration soon, too.

I’ll also do a round up post of the other sofas I considered, there were quite a few top contenders!

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