Repair or Replace? How to Decide About a Sagging Sofa

Check the frame before anything else

How a sofa feels can be fixed. The frame can't, not affordably. So start there.

Grab an arm and rock it. Then lift one front corner about six inches off the floor and watch the opposite corner while you do. A sound frame moves as one piece. If the whole thing twists, creaks loudly, or you see a joint open up, the frame is going and everything else is just decoration.

Frame solid? Then you've got a sofa worth thinking about properly.

Four questions

1. Do you actually like it?

Not "is it fine." Do you like the shape, the fabric, the way it sits in the room? Spending money to restore a sofa you were lukewarm about just means you'll replace it in two years anyway.

2. What would the same sofa cost you today?

Go and look. Most people get two surprises at once. Furniture has gone up a lot, and the current equivalent is often built worse than what they've already got.

3. What's actually wrong with it?

Cushions collapsed but the seat base firm? Cushion problem, couple of hundred dollars. Seat base sinking? Support problem, often under a hundred. Frame damaged? Replace it. Fabric worn but everything underneath fine? Reupholstery, or a decent cover if you're being practical.

4. How much longer do you want it to last?

Two more years while the kids stop using it as a trampoline is a very different question from ten. A support board answers the first one nicely. A new sofa might be the honest answer to the second.

Rough numbers

• Support board. $35 to $100, one minute, fixes a sagging seat base.
• New foam inserts. $80 to $200 a seat, few days' wait, fixes collapsed cushions.
• Webbing or spring repair. $200 to $500, week or two, proper fix for the support underneath.
• Full reupholstery. $800 to $2,500 and up, two to four weeks, basically a new sofa on the old frame.
• New mid-range sofa. $1,000 to $3,000, plus weeks of shopping and waiting for delivery.

When we'd tell you to buy a new one

We sell support boards, so treat this bit as the part where being straight with you costs us something.

• The frame's gone. Nothing you lay on top fixes a failing frame.
• A spring has snapped or come loose. A board bridges a soft seat base. It doesn't bridge a broken one.
• The cushions are fixed in place. If they won't lift out, there's nowhere for a board to go.
• You don't like the sofa. No repair fixes that one.
• The repair costs more than half a replacement and it's not a sofa you love. Put the money toward the new one.

When it's clearly worth saving

Frame solid, you like the sofa, and the problem is that you sink too far when you sit down. That's a seat base that's gone soft, and it's the cheapest thing on this whole list to sort out. Most sofas past five years old are sitting in exactly that spot.