The sofa is generally the largest piece of furniture in your home, next to the home entertainment center which houses the flat screen TV. The sofa is definitely the focal point of whatever room it is in, the living room or the family room and the sofa is for a lot of people the starting point from which their design style starts. Most people keep their sofas around for 5 to 8 years on average. It's a long time to have the same piece of furniture, but with just a bit of thought on your part before your purchase you can have a sofa you'll love for as long as you own it.

There isn't any reason to buy the most expensive sofa you see, nor should you buy the cheapest. How are you going to be using this sofa? A sofa that you'd put into a busy family room isn't necessarily the one you'd put into a formal rarely used living room. Also, if you're buying a sofa you are only planning on keeping 2 to 3 years don't buy expensive. If you're buying a sofa for your child to use in a dorm room, buy a sturdy but cheap sofa.

Consider what options you may want the sofa to have. If you live in a small home or apartment and if you entertain guests overnight you will definitely want to invest in a sleeper sofa, or a convertible sofa. Perhaps you don't need a sleeper sofa for your room, but the size of the room your sofa is going into isn't large enough to accommodate many pieces of furniture and you'd really like to have a reclining chair also. The good news is that today a lot of sofas come with one or two reclining seats.

From a design style sofas are broken down into two groups, contemporary and traditional, that's fairly standard. Within each of these two categories there are hundreds of styles. Some people like to mix it up a bit and put a more traditional sofa within a modern setting. There is no firm set rule.Of course it's you home and you should mix and match the sofa with furniture that suits you. Some people put two sofas in a living room or family room or use a sectional sofa.

Something that can really change the mood and unfortunately the price of a sofa is your choice of fabric. There are hundreds of different types of fabrics available on sofas. From simple duck cotton covers to jacquard and silk fabrics, the choices can be daunting. Also there is a huge variety of patterns and colors. Depending on the style of sofa you choose you may have two different fabrics used. The choice of a floral fabric and a striped fabric can make the same sofa look completely different.

So what is your fabric style? Floral? Bright colors? Bold geometric patterns? Here's where the real fun of a sofa starts. Some sofa manufacturers allow you to mix and match two different fabrics on a sofa. Some people like to mix it up by using bold geometric patterns usually seen on contemporary or modern sofas on traditional sofas and they use floral fabrics on more modern sofas. If you already have chairs or other furniture pieces in a room you can order a new sofa in a fabric that will go with your existing furniture.

A leather sofa is always a consideration. Leather lasts like iron and needs minimal care. As with any sofa you'll find differences in prices of leather sofas based on the grade of leather used. Flawless leather is hard to find in nature, so premium flawless leather sofas tend to be more expensive than sofas made with scarred leather. Scarred leather wears as well as premium flawless leather.

The most important piece of choosing a sofa is it's comfort. We'd suggest that you never purchase a sofa without sitting in it first. What' comfortable to one person isn't necessarily comfortable to another. There are lots of considerations, some obvious and some not. An obvious consideration would be how firm is the seat? Here is something that is not an obvious consideration, how deep is the seat? Are the pillows soft? Are the pillows attached? Sit on it. Lie down on it. Make sure that the sofa is comfortable for you.