As A Mom, I Can Say This $5,000 Couch Has Been Worth Every Single Penny

When my husband and I bought our first couch, I dragged him through four furniture stores before finally settling on the perfect, cream-colored sofa. It was just us two and our two big dogs who weren’t allowed on the furniture anyway, so it stayed pristine for years. That was, until, we had a baby. Formula dribbles, poop blowouts, and peed-through diapers slowly turned our couch into a stained, dingy mess. When we added a puppy to the family and she chewed the upholstery off one corner of the couch, we knew it was time. Once all our new additions were housebroken and done teething, we started hunting for a new couch that didn’t gross us out. We had one requirement: it had to be washable.

Enter the Lovesac Sactional. I don’t know where we first learned of the brand — maybe it was their episode of Shark Tank — but we knew the modular sofas had washable covers and that you could easily customize the sectional’s shape (so if we ever moved again, we figured we wouldn’t have to replace it). We headed to the Lovesac showroom to try their different cushion firmness options and see the fabric swatches in person, then patiently laid in wait for a few weeks, hoping for a big sale. When my husband found out Lovesacs were available through Costco, we ordered one immediately. And I truly think we will never, ever need to buy another couch.

Stats

• Price: Cost varies widely depending on the size of your sectional. Their popular configurations range from $3,200 to almost $10,000.
• Sizes: Any size, from a loveseat up to sectionals with 10 seats (or more, if you customize your own sectional shape).
• Colors: Lovesac has 175 colors to choose from. You can view them all on their website, and order swatches to see them in person before you buy.
• Who it’s for: Anyone who wants a modular sofa they can reconfigure, and those who need to wash their couch covers after a kid spills or a dog pees.
• Pro-tip: Before you zip up the cushion covers on your seat cushions, slide a puppy pee pad between the cover and the top side of the cushion insert. This way, anything that might seep through the washable cover doesn’t soak into the not-washable foam cushion itself. I wish I knew this before my toddler’s first stomach bug.

The specs

If you’ve never heard of Lovesac, they’re purveyors of giant bean bags and modular sectional sofas, all with machine washable covers for easy maintenance at home. You order your sectional based on the number of seats, backs, and sides you need. The seats double as ottomans and can be used to build a chaise lounge. The seats are rectangular, so you can build the couch to be a normal depth (I’m 5’4” and my feet touched the floor this way) or spin them 90 degrees so the seats are deeper (we switched to the deep configuration and it’s so comfy).

The bases, sides, and backs clip together with blue metal brackets, and the couch’s feet rest in special little “shoes” that secure the bases together firmly. If you want the Rolls Royce of all couches, you can even add surround sound speakers into the couch, hidden charging ports, and seats with storage underneath the cushions.

The materials

Lovesac Sactionals are super customizable, and not just in their shape. They have so many fabric and color options they can’t all be listed here, but a showroom employee told me their corded velvet material is the most popular and easiest to clean. You can order swatches online to feel and see in person. For what it’s worth, we chose the corded velvet material in the shade Venetian Taupe, and the swatch photo online looks exactly like the fabric does in real life. Bonus: the covers are made from recycled plastic bottles.

Most of Lovesac’s Sactional covers are machine washable — wash in cold water and line dry, the instructions say. I tumble mine dry on the lowest heat setting possible because we usually need the couch back in working order ASAP, but do as I say, not as I do. The Sactionals also have three different fill options, depending on how firm you like your cushions. Here’s how their website describes them:

• Standard foam: made of three high-density layers, including a supportive central layer that preserves loft and resists sagging. (This is the one we chose because we want the cushions to keep their shape for years.)
• Down blend: a cushy blend of goose down and feathers mixed with synthetic fibers, for an exceptionally comfortable sit.
• Lovesoft: a luxurious material that’s soft, supple, resilient, and keeps its lofty look without fluffing.

The couch’s frame is made of hardwood and plywood (super sturdy), and the springs inside are steel. This bad boy is heavy all put together, that’s for sure, so it’s a good thing it comes apart should we ever have to move it.

The maintenance

OK, but how does the actual washing go, you ask? Between the dog running inside with muddy feet and jumping onto her favorite end of the couch, my 2-year-old son spilling drinks on it more than once, and a stomach-bug-induced vomiting spell straight out of The Exorcist, I’ve washed the covers many times.

Here’s the tea: are the covers easy to take on and off? Not really. It requires a bit of wrestling to stuff the foam cushion inserts back in there once they’re clean. However, Lovesac’s cushion covers are designed with a big U-shaped opening on the bottom of the cover instead of having a zipper on the side of the cover. That difference makes them much easier to work with — and stuff a very large block of foam in to — than any other cushion-cover combo I’ve ever dealt with.

Aside from washing when necessary, I’ve also been able to spot clean the covers with a little detergent in warm water before. Just note that the covers aren’t waterproof, so liquids will soak through to the cushions. We’ve been able to dry them out by putting baking soda on them to draw out any moisture or smells, but now we keep puppy pee pads under the covers to catch spills (and barfs, mainly) before they reach the foam within.

How to get a Lovesac for cheap

There’s more than one way to go about scoring a Lovesac for less. We ordered ours through Costco (they’re no longer available this way, unfortunately), and it came with a ton of extra accessories we were able to sell on Facebook Marketplace to recoup around one quarter of the cost. In doing so, I met a bunch of people who were buying Lovesac Sactional parts one at a time on resale sites — a side here and a seat there — until they had a complete couch. One guy told me he built a couch the same size as ours for around half the price, but of course your total may vary.

Lovesac also runs sales and promotions, like, all the time. If you’re shopping during a time when things are full-price, wait 30 days and I promise they’ll be marked down again by then. You can also stack on a 5% discount to any sales if you’re a veteran or active duty military member, healthcare worker, teacher, first responder, or veterinarian.

Lovesac Sactional dupes

What is so special about Lovesac? For me, what set it apart is the ability to take the fabric off of any piece of the couch, even the sides, backs, and around the base of the couch, so any spill could be cleaned up. The most similar brands on the market I found are 7th Avenue and Home Reserve, whose sectionals are also modular and have removable covers on every part and piece. Home Reserve’s products are considerably less expensive than Lovesac too. We opted for a Lovesac because we could try them out in our local showroom and see the fabrics in person, but Home Reserve’s prices definitely gave us pause.

Other than those two brands, there were no perfect dupes for Lovesac that met our specific needs and the dimensions of our living room. But, we eyeballed a couch from West Elm with washable covers for a bit too.

Pros & cons

Pros:

• Every piece of fabric on this couch is removable and machine washable at home. And they come out looking as good as new.
• Having a modular sofa means that if we rearrange or move somewhere new, we can reconfigure it as needed for our new space. And, if one part breaks or one cover can’t be cleaned, we can replace that piece instead of needing a whole new sofa.
• The deep seats make it so much more comfortable and spacious than other couches.
• If I redesign the living room or get tired of the couch color, I can order new covers instead of pining for a new sofa altogether.
• We have storage seats, which are great for tucking away toys and throw blankets when company comes over.

Cons:

• The price tag is absolutely bananas. You should not have to go into credit card debt for a couch that can survive kids and pets, and yet here we are.
• Assembly is very much required. The couch arrives in 87 bajillion pieces and took about 5 hours to assemble with two adults (and a toddler running amok for half that time).
• The covers are easier to remove and put back on than our last couch, but I wouldn’t say they’re easy. I work up a sweat wrangling the foam cushions back into their covers.

The final verdict

Are Lovesacs worth it? For our family, 100%. We spend so much time in our living room, and our sofa is where we play, watch movies, wrestle, cuddle the dog, and honestly, eat a lot of our meals (yes, we’re terrible parents who aren’t doing family dinner at the table yet). We needed a couch that could stand up to all of that, be easy to clean, and hold a lot of butts when we have friends over. It still looks as good as the day we got it, and I can’t fathom why we would ever need to buy another couch knowing any broken parts or torn covers can be easily replaced. When we feel guilty about the money, we look at the cost as paying upfront for all the couches we’d otherwise have to buy as our lives play out messily around them.

The TL;DR

When my time comes, just bury me in my Lovesac storage seat.

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