These sleeper sofas had either been beaten to hell in the back of a U-Haul or parked so permanently on the carpet that no one in living memory could tell you when they arrived. This has been the case with every other sofa bed I’ve known in my life-the one my cousin slept on for years at my grandmother’s house, the one my roommates and I hauled from apartment to apartment in college, the ones I’ve crashed on in various basements, grateful it was too dark to see details. The decrepitude of the mattress came as no surprise. The mattress sagged so much in the center-and tacoed up on the sides-that it almost enveloped the person lying in the middle. But when we maneuvered the thing into position and got the bed out for a test rest, it was as bad as every sofa bed I’ve ever used. Finally, I thought, a luxury sleeper sofa, here to allay a lifetime of complaints about flimsy mattresses and crossbars jabbing into backs. My wife and I recently bought a barely used, secondhand West Elm Rochester Queen Sleeper Sofa for an amount that still stung even though it was about 90% off the retail price.
