Is there such thing as a comfortable sofa bed?!

[sarahb083]

We want a hybrid guest room/family room, and I'm struggling to find a sofa bed that looks reasonably comfortable. They all seem to have thin, awful mattresses. Ideally we'd like to see it before we buy. Any recommendations?

The nearest I’ve come is a futon with a v thick futon mattress and a good quality frame. It was from the futon company about 20 years ago. Mattress is obviously not sprung, but is thick and supportive and I’ve always found it comfy (though have only used occasionally).

What’s your budget?
I did loads of research, cos like you I didn’t want a crappy, flimsy uncomfortable mattress. I also wanted a decent sofa. The best one I found (and bought) was from here:
Sofa.com

on the pricier side, but worth it I thought, and have been proven right (I’ve slept on mine. And it’s great.
they have a clearance section - this one is a decent price, if a bright colour!

https://www.sofa.com/gb/sofas/sofabeds/isla-sofa-bed/p/SB-ISL

Not that I’ve ever sat or slept on no!!

Furl - absolutely the best by a long way, but do come with a relatively high price tag.

Yes to Furl. Our guests all compliment it

I agree with sofa.com - I have the Aissa sofabed and rate it - it has a proper sprung mattress.

The IKEA Lycksele sofa bed is IME the best of the cheap ones. I prefer it to futon, foam cushions or cheap sofa fold out ones. It's a bit weird looking as a sofa, admittedly, but a full size double bed with sprung slats and a thick mattress.

We had exactly this challenge and did loads of research - the best one we found was a Danish company called Innovation Living. John Lewis stock them.

Guests have mostly raved about it with the exception of one who thought it was too firm, so we got a memory foam topper. We love it and it looks good too.

I've had good luck with Jay-Be, but they are not cheap... More like a bed which you can turn into a sofa, so may be too much the other way.

We have just bought an Ikea Gronlid sofa bed and are very happy with it. We find it comfy as a sofa for every day and the pull out bed has a 12cm mattress which is the thickest we found, including high price ones.

May I ask a Lycksele question... do you think it could be manoeuvred up a narrow flight of stairs? Like if you took the mattress up separately and then took the base up flat-ish (and maybe had to bend it round a corner at the top)?

A few months ago I saw a post that mentioned getting an IKEA daybed and zip link mattresses to make a proper king sized bed. I can’t find the post even though I’ve searched for it. (I want a proper bed in the study/guest bedroom, but would be better as a sofa or daybed for 95% of the time)

Yes, we've done that. The mechanism is kind of articulated in 3 sections so it goes round corners but it's a bit of a nightmare finding the right bit to hold onto. Expect at least one trapped finger.

I got one in IKEA long time ago but it was't very comfortable to sleep on. Fine for sitting thou. They all say sofa bed is not for every night sleep, only occasionally but we got one with a mattress with springs, and this mechanism called "belgian system" I think and I must say it is really comfy. We got it from Lava Corners https://lavacorners.ie/product/luka-sofa-bed-with-mattress/

We have a corner sofa that pulls out into a double bed. Very comfy. It was from M&S.

I recently got a futon company double off eBay. It’s the solid oak one (can’t remember model name) and it has the premium foam and something or other mattress upgrade. It’s very comfortable to sleep on. If there is a shop near you then they always have ones you can sit on and try. I wouldn’t have paid the £1100 ask new but got it for £400 on eBay. They come up quite frequently on there.

We went with a futon and it's very comfy to sleep on. We slept on it for weeks whilst our main bedroom was being refurbished. It also has the advantage of not having a frame around it, so it's a full sized double mattress and when it's down and dressed it just looks like a bed. We have it in a bedroom that is primarily used as my office. As such it's only used as a sofa occasionally and comfy enough for that, but has the added advantage that it would be easy to show off the room as an actual bedroom when selling.

If

I don't think there is. We paid 1600 for a sofa bed for an office/spare bedroom and i wish we'd just got a bed and didn't try for a dual purpose room. The sofa is too hard to be a comfy sofa and plain uncomfortable as a bed. Sagged after about a week's use. If i could go back in time i wouldn't have bought it!

Yes, Swyft sofas have sofa beds that have an actual sprung mattress base. We love ours. Pricey, but they're on sale now. We have the Swyft model 04 sofa bed.

A mattress topper can make it slightly more comfy

Oh yes. I think facetious is good for the OP.

I saw this pop up in my watch list and thought “that’s helpful, I still need to sort out a sofa bed” … without realising it was my own thread from nearly 2 years ago!

I still haven’t bought one. To be fair, other things in the house have taken precedence, but I have started to look again.

I am currently thinking about a click clack style one, which would fit the space better (a pull out sofa bed might be too long because the room isn’t deep), but they all seem shorter than a standard double.

I don't think so. They all say that they are light use only as a sofa so are never really suitable for a family room which will probably get heavier than normal use.

We're on our second click clack in the playroom and apart from them all being much narrower than a normal double bed you inevitably find the part that people sit on gets much softer than the other half. We also have a guest room so the playroom sofabed only gets used as a bed once or twice a year by a younger guest so I'm happy to put up with the shortcomings.

And … just realised it wasn’t my own thread after all, just one I posted on 😅. But it’s still 2 years on, and I still haven’t bought a sofabed yet.