Annie Elliott, an interior designer in Washington with strong opinions on the subject, believes a five-figure couch isn’t just hype. “Unlike fashion, where you pay for style and name but not necessarily construction, with a sofasvintage I think you are paying for quality,” Ms. Elliott said. “You’re getting things like feather and down cushions as opposed to foam.”

A Place for Potatoes



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But you can buy a perfectly fine sofa, Ms. Elliott said, with a solid wood frame and feather-wrapped foam cushions, for as little as $1,500, if you find a deal. And she doesn’t see much difference in sofas priced in the midrange (say, between $2,000 and $4,000), other than shape or slight differences in fabric and cushion quality. “Now, when you get below $1,000, that’s where I think you have to be careful,” Ms. Elliott said, because manufacturers are probably cutting corners to keep the price down.

Although Ms. Elliott sees the value in investing in a top-notch sofa, she believes it’s a purchase that’s conditional on your life stage. “If you’re in that nomadic stage, moving every few years, sometimes without movers, you don’t want to invest in an expensive sofa,” she said. “It’s going to get trashed.”

What if you’re a bachelor settled into an apartment, but don’t want to buy an expensive sofa a future wife might hate?

Ms. Elliott scoffed at the notion. “I think it’s depressing to buy everything quasi-disposable,” she said, and wait for someone to “rescue you from mediocrity.”

Please, let’s keep the conversation to furniture.

One recent afternoon, with a better understanding of couch design and a willingness to spend more than $100, I visited a few Manhattan furniture stores.

At West Elm, I found a classic boxy design called the Henry that seemed to typify all that perplexes me about couch shopping. It looked remarkably similar to another sofa, the Reeded Base designed by Barbara Barry for Baker, which I saw online. Yet the Baker sofa, which was 90 inches long, started at around $8,100, while the base price for the comparable 86-inch version of the Henry was around $1,000.

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