A $300 sofa and a $3,000 sofa can look identical in a photograph. They are not the same object, but the difference is almost never where people think it is.
Here is what actually changes as the price goes up, roughly in the order it changes.
The frame
This is the first thing to go cheap and the last thing you can fix. At the bottom, frames are particleboard and staples. In the middle, softwood — pine, usually — glued and screwed. At the top, kiln-dried hardwood with joints that are cut to fit each other rather than butted together and fastened.
A particleboard frame does not fail on day one. It fails at year three, quietly, and by then it cannot be repaired. If you only pay attention to one line in a specification, make it this one.
The suspension
Under the cushions there is either webbing, serpentine springs, or eight-way hand-tied springs. Webbing is fine and light. Serpentine springs are the honest middle. Hand-tied is genuinely better and genuinely expensive, and on a piece you sit in twice a week it is money you will not feel.
The foam
Foam is sold by density, not by how soft it feels in the showroom. Low-density foam feels great for six months and then remembers the shape of whoever sits there most. High-density foam feels firmer at first and stays the same for years.
Soft and cheap feels better in a shop. Firm and dense feels better in a house.
The fabric
Fabric is measured in rub counts — how many cycles it survives in an abrasion test. Under 15,000 is decorative. 15,000 to 25,000 is normal domestic use. Above 30,000 is what goes into hotels. A high rub count on a cheap frame is a strange combination, and you see it often.
What does not change much
Design. A well-proportioned shape costs the same to manufacture as a badly proportioned one. Some of the best-looking pieces we sell are not the most expensive, and some expensive pieces are expensive because of the name on the label.
How we would spend it
If the budget is tight, put it in the frame and the foam and accept a plainer fabric. Fabric can be covered, cleaned or replaced. A frame cannot.
Every listing here shows the material and construction we were given by the maker. Where we do not know something, we leave it blank rather than guess.
