How to Choose a Sofa for a Family with Kids

If you have children in your home, what sort of sofa should you choose?

With kids in the house, you probably need more seats. A 1 seated sofa is not as cost effective as a 3 seated sofa. You need 3 single seated sofa to seat 3 people as compared to just a 3-seater. The price of 3 single-seated sofa is significantly less than the price of a 3 seated sofa.

That means, for a large family, you would save substantially if you go for the 3 seated sofas as compared to several 2 or 1 seated sofas.

One way to see the best value is to calculate cost per seat of that sofa.

For a single seat, the cost per seat is just the price.

For a 2-seated sofa, the cost per seat would be price divided by 2

For a 3 seated sofa, the cost per seat would be price divided by 3 and so on.

The best value would be the sofa with the lowest cost per seat, everything else remaining the same.

Next, consider the dirt factor. I mean, kids, with their tendency to jump on the sofa, would dirty the sofa very quickly. Not only that, they would eventually break the springs in the sofa. You could train the children not to walk, jump or play on the sofa. But it is wiser to get a sofa set that can withstand the stresses a kid would bring.

For one thing, the sofa would get dirty very quickly. A darker color would be more practical. Leave a white sofa in a home with naughty kids and you'll end up with a gray, or eventually black sofa over time. Dirt shows up so obviously in a light colored sofa. On a dark colored sofa, the deep color hides the gray or black dirt stains. You don't have to clean it so often. It will still look good months later.

Eventually, you still have to clean the sofa.

Our first sofa was a beautiful fabric sofa. It turned a dull gray over the years. As there were no slip covers, we would have to wash the sofa with an upholstery cleaner or to leave it be. On the hindsight, sofa sets with removable slip covers would have been the better bet.

Alternatively, we could have bought 2 sets of slip covers for our sofa while it was still new and rotated those to protect the sofa instead. Slip covers can be washed, so you can always have a clean sofa to sit on. To a busy mom with kids, slip covers are a boon. Dump the soiled slip covers in the washing machine and slip on clean covers.

Our next sofa was a leather sofa. That turned black within weeks. The kids would pretend to be Spiderman climbing the walls, with the sofa as the wall, or Spiderman jumping from roof to roof, with 2 adjacent sofas as the roofs. We bought a leather cleaner to clean it up.

The writer is the webmaster of buy furniture which covers furniture for every room in your home.