A sofa is one of the biggest investments you can make in home decor, and the last thing you want is to make the wrong choice. A good couch will be with you for a decade, and it should not only be comfortable and look great, it should also have the versatility to adapt to your needs in new spaces and seasons of your life.
You should consider a modular sofa. That’s the kind that comes in individual pieces you can pull apart, put back together, and rearrange to suit whatever you fancy. Usually, you can change the color of the cover without buying a whole new couch. And when moving day comes, you won’t need a team of three or four well-built movers to get it out the old door and into the new one.
I’ve been leading our coverage of the Best Couches for years, and many of us on the WIRED Reviews team have tested more than our fair share of different variations on the living-room seat. Modular couches are the way to go.
Switch Things Up …
If you move or travel frequently, a modular sofa is easy to take apart. No more playing Tetris in the U-Haul, trying to figure out how you’re going to bring your old couch to your new place. And it’s also easy to reconfigure. Say you’re working from home and you get a new desk, and you need the chaise portion of your sofa to face a different direction. You don’t need a new sofa, and you don’t need to entirely rearrange your living room—you can just reconfigure your existing modular couch. Or maybe you get a new coffee table and you don’t like how long your couch is in comparison. Remove a seat. It’s that easy.
That’s what recently happened to WIRED Reviews team director Martin Cizmar, who bought a new house and found that his new living room is functionally narrower than expected because of a large air register on the floor. Because he had the modular sofa from Koala, he simply removed one of the seats to turn it into an L-shape and put the extra section up in his attic for possible future use.
While there are a lot of standard, rectangular, boxy options, you can also play around with different fabrics and silhouettes. One example is the Castlery Auburn Performance Fabric Chaise Sectional, a modular couch with a fluffy, spill-resistant bouclé fabric and a bubbly, modern silhouette.
Modular couches can also come in handy if you have unconventional living arrangements. Do you live in a seventh-floor walk-up? A modular sofa comes in many boxes rather than as one gigantic package—you might have more steps to deal with, but you won’t have to fork over extra cash for white-glove delivery, nor will you have to convince your friends to maneuver a sofa up several flights of stairs, cursing at the banister and scraping their knuckles on narrow hallways. No ruined friendships because you said “To your left” and they tilted the whole sofa in the wrong direction. No thrown-out backs or removing doors from hinges. I’ve gotten a few modular sofas delivered to apartments with stairs, and I was able to get them into my apartment by myself. (And, if your stairs be many, you’ll only need to persuade one friend to help you out—not a bunch of them plus a truck.)
…Again and Again
Modular sofas offer additional flexibility when it comes to configurations. You can make them an L-shaped sectional, a U-shaped sectional, or a traditional straight line. You can choose deep seats or shallower ones, and there are a ton of different upholstery finishes ranging from durable pet-friendly performance fabric to chenille. You could get a sleeper sofa or one designed for small spaces. Most of them come with removable, machine-washable covers, and some even have extra bells and whistles—like built-in storage or a way to charge your phone. The Lovesac Sactional is fully modular—we’re in the process of giving it a dedicated review—and you can add StealthTech to it, which gives it speakers, a wireless charging pad, and a subwoofer. A home theater in your reconfigurable couch, complete with reclining seats? It’s more likely than you think.
Modular couches do tend to be more expensive than standard options, but the convenience often outweighs the initial investment cost. For a modular sectional sofa, I find that it’s better to go with, at the bare minimum, a standard three-seater sofa and an extra piece such as a chaise lounge. That way you can move things around, but you won’t be stuck with too many additional seats, and you should still have room for an ottoman or a coffee table. Of course, if you want to go with an oversized eight-seater, you can do that too. There are some truly gargantuan modular options available, like the Cozey Ciello XL. You can even opt for an outdoor sofa, like Outer’s Teak Outdoor Loveseat, which comes with a built-in cover to protect your patio furniture from the elements.
And while they do tend to be expensive, there are still some relatively affordable modular sofa options if you’re on a tighter budget. The Albany Park Kova has been an honorable mention in our buying guide for a couple of years, and it costs the same—or less than—similar couches that aren’t as customizable.
The long and the short of it is that a modular couch is largely similar to your standard, stuck-in-one-shape couch. You’ll still get a solid warranty. You’ll still get high-quality, high-density memory foam cushions, plush backrests, and comfortable back cushions. You still have the options for solid wood frames and stain-resistant fabric. But at the end of the day, if needed, you can change things up—something that’s only easy to do if you have a modular sofa.
If you’re in the market for a new couch, we’ve got plenty of recommendations in all shapes, sizes, and styles. You might also be able to visit a local showroom—or simply pester your comfy-couched friends about the brand they chose. (Let me know what it is in the comments!) And if you want the best of the bunch that’ll stand the test of time, you’ll consider a modular sofa.
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