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 notas cost effective as a 3 seated sofa. You need 3 single seated sofa to seat 3people as compared to just a 3-seater. The price of 3 single-seated sofa issignificantly less than the price of a 3 seated sofa.

That means, for a large family, you would save substantially if you go forthe 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 thatsofa.

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 3and so on.

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

Next, consider the dirt factor. I mean, kids, with their tendency to jump on the sofa, would dirty the sofavery quickly. Not only that, they would eventually break the springs in thesofa. You could train the children not to walk, jump or play on the sofa. But itis 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 bemore practical. Leave a white sofa in a home with naughty kids and you'll end upwith a gray, or eventually black sofa over time. Dirt shows up so obviously in alight colored sofa. On a dark colored sofa, the deep color hides the gray orblack dirt stains. You don't have to clean it so often. It will still look goodmonths later.

Eventually, you still have to clean the sofa.

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

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

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

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