Sofa Beds

Choosing a sofa bed

A good sofa bed has to pass two tests: it must be a comfortable sofa every day, and a bed that guests do not complain about. Most sofa beds fail one of them. The ones worth buying have a real sofa frame with proper seat cushions, and a mattress and mechanism underneath that a guest can sleep on for a week.

Queen sofa bed or double

A queen sofa bed opens to a mattress roughly 150 cm wide and suits a couple staying over; it needs a sofa around 200 cm wide and about 220 cm of clear floor in front of it when open. A double sofa bed is narrower and suits a single guest, a child's room or a small study. Measure the room with the bed open as well as closed, and leave a path to the door.

The mattress and the mechanism

The mattress is what decides whether the guest sleeps. Look for a mattress at least 10 cm thick, in memory foam or high-density foam, on a sprung or slatted platform rather than a thin bar frame that can be felt through the bed. Open and close the mechanism in a showroom: it should lift out in one movement without removing the seat cushions, and lock flat with no bar across the middle. A sofa bed that is hard to open will stay closed, and the guests end up on the lounge.

A sofa first

Day to day the sofa bed is a lounge, so judge it as one: a solid frame, a seat that is comfortable to sit upright in, arms at the right height, and a fabric that suits the room. A textured, mid-tone fabric with a stain-resistant finish is the practical choice for a family room or a home office that doubles as the spare room. Choose a style that matches the rest of the house so the room does not look like a spare room when the bed is away.

Where a sofa bed earns its keep

The home office that turns into a guest room at Christmas, the apartment with no spare bedroom, the theatre room where the kids' friends sleep over, the holiday house down south. In each case a sofa bed gives you the room back the rest of the year. For a guest room that is used often, a bed with a proper mattress is still the better sleep; a sofa bed is for the room that has to do two jobs.

Finishing the room

Keep a spare set of bed linen and a throw in an ottoman beside the sofa bed so making it up takes a minute, and leave a side table at bed height for a glass of water and a phone.

See them in a Perth showroom

The Furniture Gallery is WA owned and family run, with showrooms across Perth and regional WA. Sit on the sofa beds, open the mechanisms and lie on the mattresses before you choose. When you have chosen, add the sofa bed to your cart and enter your postcode for a delivery price; our white-glove delivery team will unpack it, assemble it and take the packaging away.