The Best Sectional Sofa: Shopping Tips!

It’s been almost two years since we bought the sectional sofa in our family room and I still get questions about it almost daily from those of you who are shopping for a sectional for your own home including what do I think is the best sectional sofa, what you should look for when shopping for one, how I keep mine looking so clean, and more. I put a LOT of time and research into choosing our family room sectional (it was a huge investment!) and learned so much along the way that I decided to spill everything I know! So let’s jump on into this Q & A style (post includes affiliate links – full disclosure statement available {here})

What’s The Best Sectional Sofa?

There definitely isn’t a single best sectional but I can tell you that after talking to a ton of people and reading endless reviews, sectionals are typically a “you get what you pay for” piece of furniture. You don’t have to go crazy with a $20,000 sectional to get an excellent one but on the other hand, don’t expect to get 20 years out of a $1000 sectional. When shopping for a sectional for our family room, I was looking for a high quality piece that we would have for at least the next 10-15 years and that would hold up well to daily use.

The two brands I highly recommend that I think make some of the best sectional sofas out there are Lee Industries and CR Laine – they’re both extremely reputable brands based in the US with several different sectional styles that I love. I ended up choosing a Lee Industries sectional mainly because I’ve had a great experience with their furniture in the past.

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The most economical way to buy a Lee Industries sectional is purchasing one through Crate & Barrel (you can check out the Lee Industries sectionals they offer {here}) or Serena & Lily (you can see their sectionals {here}) and choosing one of their stock fabrics. If they don’t have a sectional style or stock fabric that works for you, then you’ll have to go custom (which is a good bit more $$$ but there are a ton of options) – you can go through either store or through a local Lee Industries retailer which you can search for {here}. 

If your head is spinning looking at those sectional price tags, I get it – it literally took us two years to pull the trigger on a nice sectional because it was so much money (our section is {this design} which we ordered in a custom configuration). For a similar non-custom (but cheaper) Lee Industries option, check out {this beautiful sectional}.

If a Lee Industries sectional is way over your budget, a great mid-priced option is Pottery Barn’s York sectional that you can find {here}. There are multiple configuration options, the choice of square of sloped arms, and slipcovered or non-slipcovered – my favorite is the slipcovered slope arm sectional found {here} – so pretty!

If your budget is super limited, I would look at the IKEA EKTORP sectional – it’s not a “forever” piece of furniture but it is a really great bang for the buck! I own one of the EKTORP sofas and after having it for five years, it’s still going strong:

What Things Should I Look for When Shopping for a Sofa or Sectional?

When shopping for a sectional, some of the things I looked for that are indicators of a higher quality furniture piece are:

• US made
• Hardwood frame (avoid soft woods and particle board)
• Eight-way hand-tied springs
• Double-doweled and blocked joints on corners
• A good system for how the sections interlock. Our old sectional had plastic connectors that would often come apart and one even broke. My current sectional has metal connector that work beautifully – they always stay connected yet they’re easy to disconnect if you want to move any of the sections apart.

• An excellent warranty

What’s the Best Fabric for a Sectional Sofa?

There are some really amazing performance fabrics out there (Sunbrella, Crypton, etc .) so if you have young kids or pets you’ll want to check those out! They can withstand some of the worst of spills and still come back looking amazing because they can be washed (if you have a slipcovered sectional) or cleaned using things as harsh as a bleach solution! If you’re going to choose something that’s not a performance fabric, look at the double rub count of the fabric – a higher count means a heavier duty fabric that should wear better.

How Do You Keep Your Light-Colored Sectional so Clean?  

I get this question ALL of the time. And actually, while I really wanted to find a performance fabric to use on my sectional, I had a very specific linen-like look in mind and ended up going with Basket Natural (not a performance fabric) because it was exactly the look that I wanted. The things I do to keep it clean are:

1. Don’t allow messy food and drinks on the sectional – we eat popcorn and drink water or seltzer on it but if it’s a food that has the potential to cause a bad stain, if you want to eat in the family room you have to eat it on the coffee table. Of course, when we have other adults over, we have wine and other goodies when hanging out on it – the food and drink rules are for the kids!
2. Use lots of throw blankets – Hope is allowed up on the sectional so I made sure we always have a few throws on it – she would always rather cuddle up on a throw than lie on the bare sectional so it keeps her (and her hair) on the throws that can be thrown in the wash (oh the life of Hope! 🙂 )
3. Wash it (because it’s slipcovered!). I chose a slipcovered sectional both for the look of it and because if you do get a bad stain, the slipcover can be easily removed and taken to the laundromat. 
4. I haven’t done this (even though I totally meant to soon after getting it) but if you are really concerned about stains you can also have your furniture sprayed with a fabric protector by a professional company. Many of these companies offer free stain removal services if you can’t get something out yourself after they’ve sprayed your furniture piece. 

How Do You Decide on the Arrangement for Your Sectional?

A sectional is a huge investment so you’ll definitely want to make sure that it’s the perfect fit for your room! Here are a few of my tips on choosing the specific sectional pieces/arrangement:

1. Work with a professional who will sketch out your room (bring dimensions of your space with you when you’re sectional shopping) and be able to tell you the different arrangements that will work for you. Typically the store that you’re buying your sectional through can help you with this. 
2. Make sure you’re leaving enough walking space so that you can easily walk around your sectional and access the whole length of it. The limiting factor in the length of the short arm of our family room sectional was that we needed to leave enough space to get to the door to our deck – we rarely use that door so it wasn’t important for us to have a super wide pathway to it but we measured our bare minimum desired pathway width and used it to plan the length of that arm of our sectional. Scroll & Click/Tap to Shop This Space:
   
   
3. Think long-term! This isn’t our forever home and since we plan to have this sectional for a long time, I made sure that I chose my sectional pieces wisely. For example, I could have saved a bit of money by buying what Lee Industries calls a “cornering sofa” for the short side of our sectional – it includes the end section, a middle section, and the corner all as one piece. However, if we were to move to another home with the opposite dimensions where the space was really deep but not very wide, there would be no way to make our current sectional work. So instead, for the short side of our sectional we bought what’s called a “one arm sofa” (it includes the end section + a middle section) and then we bought the corner as a separate piece. By doing this, in the future we can move the armless piece on the long arm of the sofa over to the short arm of the sofa to change the dimensions up if needed. 
4. Measure the doorway that the sectional needs to get through to reach your room before buying it! In our old house, I’ll never forget having a non-returnable sofa delivered that was seriously only 1/2″ away from being too wide to fit into our room. I about died when the guy told me he didn’t think it would fit. I got lucky but it was a lesson learned!

That about wraps it up! I hope that you guys found this post to be helpful! If you have any questions that I didn’t answer, leave them in the comments and I’ll be sure to get back to you. Also share any tips or advice that you might have – there’s a lot of collective sectional shopping experience in this group! If you want to be able to easy find this post for later, just pin the image below ->

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! If you have any questions about where anything is from in our family room, you should be able to find them in the Source List below. 

Paint color: Walls & Trim in Benjamin Moore Cloud White

Furniture: Slipcovered sectional (fabric is Basket Natural) | Reclaimed wood TV console | Acrylic coffee table | Rattan accent chair | Lighting: Chandelier (satin bronze) | Pillows & Throws: Sofa – Gray tassel edged pillows | Textured white pillow | Velvet blush flock pillows | White pom pom throw (similar)| Blush fringe edged throw | Pillow on rattan chair – White Montecito pillow | Rug: Honeycomb ivory/grey wool rug | Shades: The Shade Store – Robert Allen Fabric in Perfect Stripe (Earth) | Art surrounding TV (from top left):  Son (abstract) by Lori Wemple | Sand Spirit (horse print) by Leslie Le Coq | Mesmerize by Melanie Severin | Marble Two by Melissa Selmin | Brainchild (abstract) by Misty Hughes | Morning Walk on the Seine by Sharon Rowan | Stormy Sunrise by Melanie Severin| Reflection (boat print) by Neeta Sawhney (no longer available) | Flora in B+W by Very Marta| Llama Love by Jocelyn Eden  (Art prints are 18″ x 24″ prints that were matted and framed by Minted to a final finished size of 18.5″ x 24.5″) | Coffee table accessories: Tray (28″ x 28″) | Brass cranes | Wishbone | Book: Lagom | Book: The Collected Home | Bookshelves: Grasscloth lining the back of the bookcases | Brass finger pulls on cabinets – no longer available | White jug – HomeGoods | Tortoise shell – no longer available | Brass bowl – thrifted | Black and white decorative balls | Elephant bookends | Gold sculpture with black stand – West Elm | Glass jug | Dried star pod | White candlesticks – Pottery Barn years ago | Tall coral – HomeGoods | Lantern – HomeGoods | Elephant – HomeGoods | Glass bead necklace (on elephant) | Wood bowl – Home Emporium |  Horse – HomeGoods | Other Accessories: Faux fiddle leaf fig tree (mine is the medium) | Basket for fiddle leaf fig tree