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Two things can be true at once: Sleeper sofas are a feat of engineering, and they can be the bane of your existence. It’s a marvel to fit a frame and mattress for a bulky piece of furniture inside another, equally bulky piece of furniture; also, you’ve probably slept or sat on a sleeper sofa that fell short of both marks, hard as rocks to sit on and creaky to sleep on. An equally important, difficult-to-find quality is a sleeper sofa that doesn’t scream “sleeper sofa” — i.e., isn’t bulky, awkwardly proportioned, and upholstered in a drab shade of crunchy polyester fabric. (As interior designer Keita Turner put it, “The sign of a quality sleeper is that you walk into the room and don’t know it is one.”)
Luckily, the past several years have seen a vast expansion of actually nice-looking sleeper sofas that manage to square the circle: nice-looking enough to live in your living room, well-engineered enough that you don’t dread setting them up, with enough support for a good night’s sleep. To find them, I consulted experts and interior designers, then called on my intrepid Strategist colleagues to test some of the top picks in their own homes.
Update on November 16, 2024: Updated prices and checked stock for all products.
What we’re looking for
Size
Sleeper sofas come in a range of sizes, from loveseats or chairs-and-a-half that convert into twin-sized beds and full-sized sofas that contain queen- or king-sized mattresses. Like buying a sofa, your best bet is to measure your space and work back from there.
Conversion mechanism
Sleeper sofas are very much not a solved product, and you’ll find a variety of mechanisms for converting a roughly three-by-seven-foot sofa into a five-by-six-foot bed frame. None is perfect, but all the methods on this list work well enough that I recommend them. Most people associate sleeper sofas with a tri-folded mattress on a metal pullout frame, a style pioneered by the bedding company Leggett & Platt in the 1970s and credited by furniture-maker Scott Jordan as the reason most people hate sleeper sofas. This list also contains trundle beds, which stow a second bed frame on wheels under the first, and a style I’m calling “foam-on-the-floor” sleeper sofas, which contain panels of foam that can be rearranged from a frameless sofa into a mattress that lies directly on the ground, similar to an air mattress.
Mattress
A sofa bed’s conversion mechanism determines what kind of mattress it can contain. Metal pull-out mattresses are typically thinner, between 3.5 and 5 inches, since they have to be folded into thirds to fit in the sofa’s frame. These can contain springs, memory foam, or a mix of the two. A foam-on-the-floor sleeper like the Teddy sofa has a comparatively thicker mattress, around seven to eight inches, because the panels only need to stack once. (For comparison, our best-in-class foam mattress is ten inches thick, so they’re fairly close to the real thing.) In general, a thicker mattress will feel more comfortable — especially for a metal-framed pull-out sofa bed, any extra inch of padding makes a difference in whether or not you can feel a metal bar underneath your back — but the quality of the foam inside matters as well.
Best sleeper sofa overall
Size: Queen | Conversion mechanism: Metal pullout frame | Mattress: 4” thick memory foam
This marshmallowlike two-seater sofa bed from Article, also the maker of one of our favorite sofas, is a good example of Turner’s criteria of a pullout couch that doesn’t look like a pullout couch. It’s “a real Big Comfy Couch,” says former Strategist editor Chelsea Peng, and it’s great to sleep on, according to her brother, who used it over Thanksgiving.
After testing the Article Vati sofa myself — the brand doesn’t have a showroom, so they shipped a model to our office — I can confirm it’s a solid, affordable, fits-anyone sleeper sofa. I found the memory-foam mattress is quite supportive and comfortable, something that Strategist outdoors writer Jeremy Rellosa confirmed after taking a ten-minute lunch-break nap on it. (His review: “surprisingly comfortable,” with good firmness and bounce. He also couldn’t feel the bed frame’s metal support bars at all.) The conversion mechanism is easy to manage with one person. I set it up in less than a minute, cushion removal included. In its sofa form, you’d never guess that there’s a bed inside. Its hyperbolically puffy silhouette has an almost overinflated feel when it first arrived but does break in with use. It comes in 11 colors, from a dusty reddish clay to an ivory bouclé polyester-cotton-wool blend.
Best less-expensive sleeper sofa
Size: Queen | Conversion mechanism: Metal pullout frame | Mattress: 4.75” thick foam
For a less-expensive sleeper sofa, IKEA is a great option. Strategist deals editor Sam Daly slept on her mom’s (now discontinued) Harlanda IKEA sectional “for a few months mid-pandemic and I loved it,” she says. For this article, Strategist beauty writer Tembe Denton-Hurst tested the similar Hyltarp model with similarly glowing reviews. It’s “comfy as both a sleeper and sitting couch,” and a friend who slept on it said it felt like a real bed, the highest praise for a sleeper sofa. (Denton-Hurst added a mattress topper for extra padding.) She also reports that it’s easy to convert with one person. It comes in ten colors, including two shades of blue and neutrals like stone and mushroom brown.
Best frameless sleeper sofa
Size: King | Conversion mechanism: Foam-on-the-floor | Mattress: 6.69” thick foam
The Teddy sofa by Danish brand Omhu is the best example I’ve seen of the foam-on-the-floor mattress, both in terms of aesthetics and functionality. Two panels of foam are contained by a chrome-plated bracket in sofa form, then convert into a roughly king-size mattress. Strategist senior editor Winnie Yang owns the sofa, so I visited her apartment to test it out. I found it incredibly easy to take apart and put back together, even with one person, and irresistible to sprawl out on in bed form. It’s a great sofa for households with kids and pets — it’s low to the ground and frameless, which means no hard components or sharp edges, and the cushions can be removed and machine-washed. It comes in every color imaginable (21 total, including some beautiful pinks and yellows) and is upholstered in a sturdy, soft polyester corduroy.
Best twin-size sleeper sofa
Size: Twin | Conversion mechanism: Metal pullout frame | Mattress: 5.5” innerspring
If all you need is a twin-size bed, interior designer Jennifer Wallenstein suggests this chair-size slip-covered sofa from Crate & Barrel. It has a metal pullout base that folds out to support a 5.5-inch-thick innerspring twin mattress. (For an innerspring mattress, “you want them to be about five or six inches thick at minimum,” Wallenstein says.) She recommends topping it with an air mattress, which doubles the thickness.
Best daybed with trundle sleeper sofa
Size: Twin to king | Conversion mechanism: Trundle pullout | Mattress: Foam cushions
Two of our experts — Ted Roberts, the style and design chief for Schlage, and Turner — recommend Pottery Barn’s Luna sleeper, a daybed that converts into a roughly king-sized mattress, for its “exceptional structural integrity.” Roberts likes that the daybed is available in several styles of performance fabric, which protects it from heavy use or occasional stains. You can sleep on it as is (in daybed form, it’s about the size of a twin mattress) or pull out the seat to unfold a wider sleeping area. It also scores high for aesthetics. “It’s very slick. I almost can’t believe that it’s Pottery Barn,” says Turner.
Best (less expensive) daybed with trundle sleeper sofa
Size: Twin to queen | Conversion mechanism: Trundle pullout | Mattress: Two foam mattresses
For something even more affordable, consider this Ikea daybed, recommended by Yaiza Armbruster, founder of Atelier Armbruster. She bought it for her kids’ room so their friends have somewhere to sleep (and sit) when they come over for sleepovers, but it could work well for adults, too, especially in apartments that are short on space, since it contains two large drawers. (It would be a great place to store linens.) The daybed’s seat is made up of two twin foam mattresses set on top of each other, and a trundle converts the daybed into a roughly king-sized frame — just rearrange the twin mattresses side-by-side. As far as looks, it’s recognizably IKEA, but Armbruster says the daybed is easy enough to customize — she did so by simply painting it pink.
Best four-in-one sleeper sofa
Size: Twin to king | Conversion mechanism: Foam-on-the-floor | Mattress: Foam cushions
Armbruster likes the Twilight sleeper because “it looks nice, is comfortable, and opens up to what’s essentially a king-size bed.” It’s made of two parts — a cylindrical backrest bolster that can be adjusted to customize seat depth and a large seat cushion made out of foam that turns into the mattress. Simply pivot the bolster up and back, then remove the cushion and place on the floor. When pushed up against the sofa’s base, the cushion creates a bed that’s larger than a queen but slightly smaller than a king. Or you can simply keep the two parts separate to create two twin sleeping beds. The sofa can even be used as a daybed, giving you four functions — sofa, daybed, queen bed, and two twins — in one.
Best stylish sleeper sofa
Size: Queen | Conversion mechanism: Metal pullout frame | Mattress: 3.5” thick cotton-quilted foam
Sixpenny makes some of our favorite slipcovered sofas, so I was curious to hear Strategist senior editor Simone Kitchens’s thoughts when she tested out their sleeper. Her review: She’s a big fan of their Devyn model as a couch, and also reports it makes a great bed. The mattress is on the thinner side at 3.5 inches, but it’s quite firm and supportive: “I like a very firm mattress and there’s no sinking into this one,” she says. I recommend Sixpenny if you’re a textile nerd — their sofas are upholstered in beautiful, minimally treated fabrics — and the Devyn sofa is no exception. “The fabric is beautiful, hefty, and great quality,” Kitchens says. (And it’s not hard to clean: “My kid got some yogurt on it, and it was easy to dab away.”)
Best splurge sleeper sofa
Size: Queen | Conversion mechanism: Metal pullout frame | Mattress: 4-5” thick, multiple options
If you ask a furniture seller about the best sleeper sofa, they’ll probably point you toward American Leather. (The name is semi-vestigial: They do make a great leather sofa, but not all their sofas are leather.) The Texas company has their own patented conversion mechanism, which is smoother to unfold than the standard metal frame (I could even manage it one-handed) and eliminates the metal bars you may feel under your back in a badly-constructed sleeper. I tested out the sofa at the showroom of Scott Jordan Furniture in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and although it’s a splurge, I found it to be the best-engineered of the bunch. It’s comfortable to sprawl out on and easy to convert, and in sofa form, the cushions are comfortable and bouncy. The sofas are made to order so have a ton of customization options, from size (twin to queen to king) to the style of mattress and the upholstery.
Some more Strategist-approved sofas and accessories
Our experts
• Yaiza Armbruster, founder of Atelier Armbruster
• Mandy Cheng, interior designer
• Kelly R. Collier-Clark, principal designer at Plot Twist Design
• Sam Daly, Strategist deals editor
• Tembe Denton-Hurst, Strategist beauty writer
• Scott Jordan, founder of Scott Jordan Furniture
• Simone Kitchens, Strategist senior editor
• Annie Mueller, interior designer
• Chelsea Peng, former Strategist senior editor
• Ted Roberts, style and design chief for Schlage
• Devin Shaffer, Decorilla design expert
• Keita Turner, interior designer
• Jennifer Wallenstein, interior designer
• Winnie Yang, Strategist senior editor
Additional reporting by Lauren Ro
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