The couch is the centerpiece of a home. It’s a place you, guests and roommates are naturally drawn. Thus, a good couch pulls double duty: not only does it have to be comfortable, but it also has to look good. Whether you’re balling on a budget or not, these are the best sofas and couches to squeeze through the front door.

The Short List

Best Overall Sofa: Burrow Sofa

Burrow offers the best combination of all possible features in a couch or sofa that’s not wildly expensive. It’s sturdy, comfortable, customizable, modular and ships within a week of ordering. On top of that, its upholstery fabric is remarkably stain-resistant, there’s a charging cable built into it and its quietly mid-century aesthetic is pretty easy to fold into most living situations. It does all of this and keeps the price for a full-size, fully customized sofa just over $1,000.

Best Sofa Under $500: Zinus Sunny Modern Sofa

Buying a super-cheap sofa can be risky, but not everyone can throw down a thousand bucks on a couch. Zinus’s relatively new sofas are a lot like their memory foam mattresses — exceptionally affordable and surprisingly cushy. The Sunny Modern has a low-key look, single tufted foam cushion and high rub count upholstery. Plus, there’s a 100-day trial period and it ships free.

Best Sectional Sofa: Room & Board Easton Sectional

Room & Board may seem antiquated compared with newer and shinier furniture-making companies, but those other companies have nothing on R&B-level quality. The frame of its Easton Sectional is made by hand from kiln-dried hardwood. The cushions are spring, foam, down and feathers. The Easton Sectional comes in various sizes and colors and is fully modular. On top of that, R&B makes a case for the most transparent furniture company out there — no lies about ship dates, availability or price. In other words, you get what you pay for.

Best Sleeper Sofa: Blu Dot One Night Stand

Sleeper sofas tend to be blocky, space-consuming eyesores, which runs against the space-saving nature of a sleeper sofa. Blu Dot’s playfully named option is the opposite. Instead of an enormous base with a pull-out mattress or a trundle bed situation, Blu Dot decided it’d be easier to take the pillows off and flip the seat forward, instantly creating a queen-sized mattress with legs in your living room. It will be difficult to find a more efficient sleeper couch than this one.

he 16 Best Sofas and Couches of 2019

Capsule Home Brooklyn Mid-Century Sofa

Capsule Home’s specialty is making furniture for the design-conscious and very broke young adult. All it’s offerings ooze mid-century and many, like this one, feature other tech add-ons like built-in USB ports. A pair of bolster pillows and a bench cushion round out this ultra-affordable option.

Zinus Sunny Modern Sofa

Though Zinus is better known for their ultra-cheap mattresses, the company makes ultra-cheap sofas, too. The wood-frame Sunny Modern Sofa features tufted foam cushions, a 100-day trial period, free shipping (all in one box!) and a soft hit on the wallet. In short, it’s a nice first couch, and the perfect stand-in until you arrive at greener pastures.

Ikea Vimle Sofa

Super simple, super available, super affordable, probably not super easy to assemble — yep, it’s an Ikea product. Its upholstery can be zipped off and washed in a machine. It also comes in a slew of colors, has a 10-year warranty and is probably the most plain couch on this list, but that’s not a failing of the sofa. Not all furniture need be statement pieces — this sofa lets the rest of your living room shine.

Burrow Sofa

Go to Burrow looking to pick up a small chair to sit in the corner of your living room and leave with a new king sectional (free shipping, too). A patently absurd level of customization combines with fair prices and a very nappable cushion for a recipe to a living room dripping with mid-century goodness.

Floyd Sofa

Well-made, no-nonense furniture that ships easily and looks just a touch different to everything else out there — that’s the quickest way to describe Floyd’s value proposition. Its sofa breaks down into a pile of very packable pieces. As such, it’s probably the most shipping friendly unit on the market. Thanks to a bench frame and armrests that double as pillows, it’s very much its own thing.

Article Sven Birch Sectional

The most popular sofa on a site with an actual mountain of options. Article’s Sven sectional (pictured here in birch ivory) sports tufted bench cushions, clean lines, bolster pillows and an unmistakeably mid-century look. It ships to your house shortly after ordering and takes all of five minutes to assemble. With a couch like this, you won’t need a reading chair.

Interior Define Caitlin by The Everygirl

Soft edges, aggressively romantic upholstery and customization abound in this couch named after Interior Define’s first intern. Change the upholstery fabric, the color, the legs, the length and add an ottoman. The Caitlin melts into your first apartment just as seamlessly as it does your last. If you don’t go for the mod velvet upholstery, you should reconsider your design taste.

Blu Dot One Night Stand Sleeper Sofa

Blu Dot is as close as American design has come to an original mid-market furniture maker. In other words, there are dozens of big box stores making derivative furniture at a variety of price points, there’s what’s sold at DWR, then there’s Blu Dot sandwiched between. This skinny, minimal sofa doubles as a spontaneous guest bed — just throw the pillows on the ground and flip the cushion out.

West Elm Brooklyn Leather Loveseat

A compact sofa with looks that get better with wear. The aniline top-grain leather starts off shiny and neat and develops scuffs, folds and a deep patina. Like the perfect pair of jeans, this couch speaks volumes without showing off.

Hem Palo Two-Seater

Hem’s house-designed love seat looks like it’s about to give its sitters (or nappers) a hug. Made with a wool-poly blend, its upholstery is as sturdy as it is soft, and its lifted, cushioned sides make for armrests that double as pillows.

Restoration Hardware Cloud Sofa

The Cloud Sofa is one of the most comfortable sofas you can buy. Cushions made with either 100 percent goose down or a core of goose down absorb your weight without being all sink and no support. RH stocks three upholstery variations but offers almost 200 options via special order.

Room & Board Easton Sectional

Room & Board makes furniture wth staying power. Its Eason Sectional is modular, a bit modern and can be upholstered in many colors. More importantly, it’s held up by kiln-dried hardwood frame joinery, hardwearing spring suspension and cushions with pitch perfect levels of sink.

Rove Concepts Borge Mogensen 3-Seater

Icons of Danish design, Borge Mogensen’s sofas are as cozy as they are pretty. Available in 19 different leather upholstered finishes, this three-seater is made up of ultra-dense memory foam, a hardwood box frame and solid walnut legs.

Normann Copenhagen Swell Sofa

Normann Copenhagen is one of the biggest European design outlets in the world, and its Swell Sofa is a prime example why. It does away with clean lines and sharp form, and instead opts for a super-cushy, beanbags-in-couch form approach. The cushioning (which covers the whole thing) is a special memory foam specifically designed to optimize air flow, keeping you cooler all year round.

Civil Noord Three Seat Sofa

Don’t groan at the price yet. Civil’s directive is direct-to-consumer gone luxe — 100 percent cotton or leather upholstery made in Italy, strong warranties and high (but quiet) technology. This specific sofa has a “Magic Box” attached, which is a coy name for a floating side table where the entire surface is a charging pad. Also, the whole Noord collection is modular, so it grows with you.

Barcelona Couch

What kind of couch list would leave out a couch fit for kings? Designed in 1930, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair was pencilled from notebook to throneroom with Spanish royalty in mind. Today, it’s made the same way was then, with Spinneyback cowhide leather, an African sapele frame and lots of TLC.