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Sofa beds are a great space-saving, multi-purpose investment

Space in most homes is at a premium and care must be taken to make the most of it. Many furniture manufacturers devote a lot of time and thought into making items that are dual-purpose; the sofa bed is one of the most useful of these.

For homes with no spare bedroom capacity, the sofa bed can be incorporated in the main living area, being useable by day for seating, but equally useable for overnight guests. Nowadays, they are comfortable enough to be used for long periods because the makers have progressed from designing them purely for function. When the concept of the sofa bed was first promoted, they would be made with the most basic framework and the thinnest of mattresses, making them awkward to operate and uncomfortable to sleep on. They were often disposed of or consigned to the garage because they were not as useful as they should have been.

Sofa beds today have many different types of mechanism and the buyer needs to try as many varieties as possible to find the one that suits them the most. The materials used are on a par with good quality sofas and armchairs so are suitable for the smartest living room; some manufacturers will make bespoke covers to order, to match existing furniture.

A sofa bed can take the place of the family sofa if space is really short; it makes the ideal piece of furniture to keep in an office area or a dining room. Most sofa beds are the size of a small double bed so will not take up the space that, say, a king sized bed would. A child or teenager in a large bedroom would be happy to have somewhere extra for their friends to relax when visiting them or sleeping overnight.

The task the manufacturers of sofa beds set themselves is to design something that would look stylish and up to date, but not make its dual function too obvious. It still has to feel comfortable to sit on for long periods, and the mechanism has to take that into account and not be obvious as soon as someone sits on it.

When choosing a sofa bed, it is essential to test it as a bed as well as a sofa, so the store should allow the prospective buyer to test ease of operation, to lie on it as if sleeping and to sit on it once it has been restored to its seating mode.