Why Does My Reclining Sofa Look Off?

by Nick, Digital Specialist | January 11, 2021

One of the biggest complaints we hear about reclining furniture has nothing to do with the recliners themselves- it's that the cushions don't line up quite right. Is there a reason why they look this way? Is that just the way they are?

One of the biggest issues our service department has to do with reclining furniture, but it’s not what you might expect. A lot of people think that the biggest issue when it comes to reclining pieces is that the mechanisms that make it move either break or stop working; this is not the case! Motors and mechanisms are very reliable these days; the biggest complaint that our service department receives about these pieces is that they don’t line up just right.

To explain it another way, some customers are concerned when the seams of a piece of furniture don’t line up perfectly. Imagine a reclining sofa with three seats, and the two seats on the ends are reclining- they will see that the top of the sofa isn’t lined up quite so perfectly, or that some of the seams or edges on the cushions aren’t quite in a straight line all the way across.

The easiest way to explain it is this: reclining furniture is supposed to be this way! Because of its moving parts, the cushions on reclining pieces don’t always end up in the exact same spot where they started. This is just the nature of pieces that move. See below for some photos of some pieces on our showroom floor- this is how it is going to look.

With this in mind- if you’re the kind of person where this will bother you, then reclining furniture is not for you! It’s always going to have that casual, lived-in look. If that’s not the look for you, you might want to consider a stationary sofa with a chaise, which will let you put your feet up without having a recliner as part of your sofa. If you really like the idea of a recliner, you could consider a single-seat recliner, where you won’t have the issues of trying to line up multiple seams or cushions.