Anyone who has tried to spruce up their living room on a tight budget knows a thing or two about upcycling furniture. It’s more cost-effective than buying brand new and less wasteful too. 

We love upcycling - it’s no secret. After all, turning IKEA cabinets, dressers, and nightstands into designer pieces is what we’re known for at Norse Interiors. 

But did you know there are other companies that can help turn your everyday living room furniture into beautiful accents? This one specializes in upgrading the common sofa.

 

Comfort Works - Custom slipcovers for any sofa brand

If you’re looking to save your old raggy sofa from becoming landfill or simply just want to give it a new makeover, consider checking out Comfort Works. 

They specialize in turning sofas into statement pieces and have a reputation for dressing up IKEA sofas better than IKEA themselves, though they do cater to most major sofa brands as well.

Here’s a couple of ways they offer to spruce up your sofa from the comfort of your home. Combine all of them together and by the time you’re done with your sofa, it will look like it has undergone cosmetic surgery.

 

1) Tailor-fitted slipcovers

The fastest and easiest way to dramatically change the look of your sofa is through using a slipcover. Not the thin stretchy ones you find at Walmart but tailor-fitted slipcovers with real sofa fabric. 

The covers are tailor-fitted and are machine washable as well to make your life more convenient, which is a great feature for households with messy kids or pets. Slip them on and off your sofa for an immediate transformation, Malcolm from designsixtynine made this beautiful upgrade to his IKEA Nockeby.

Those with a passion for designing their own home will enjoy the fact that the sofa cover can be personalized exactly to their tastes. There are a ton of fabric options to pick from, from cotton, polyester, linen to even vegan leather.

For an even more dramatic look change, make use of the various “slipcover style choices” to change the theme of your sofa. 

Farmhouse, modern, Scandinavian, minimalist are just some of the looks they offer and when combined with different fabric colors and materials, it can really switch-up the appearance of your everyday sofa. 

 

2. Switching out the sofa legs

The use of different materials such as steels, plastics, and wood is a key element in interior decor, and applying this principle to something small like the legs on your sofa can give it a whole new feeling.

Comfort Works sells wooden legs on their website and there are many color choices and shapes of wood to choose from. The tapered and stained cherry wood legs, in particular, ooze the mid-century look.

Also, the different types of sofa legs also come in varying heights. This is something that could be greatly appreciated by those with sofas too deep for their legs to touch the floor (or vice versa), who can now hack their sofa to the perfect height.

 

3. Tufting

Those who enjoy a little DIY will appreciate this hands-on way of turning your couch into something that looks a lot more expensive. How? By tufting the sofa yourself.

The practice of tufting sofas started centuries ago and has never gone out of style. The look is elegant and draws lots of attention to the sofa. Of course, that’s where you want people to look after going through the hard work of sewing on those buttons.

Normally, going to an upholsterer just to get a couch tufted is almost unheard of. It would cost close to a thousand dollars for that single job which is prohibitively expensive. You can save all that money and pick up a new skill by using a tufting kit.

On her blog, Michelle Carter shows us that DIY tufting isn’t as daunting as it seems with her gorgeous IKEA Karlstad couch.

Start by choosing the tufting buttons in a color that matches your sofa, mark out the areas to thread through, and start sewing the buttons on. When you’re done you’ll have a couch that looks a thousand dollars more expensive. 

 

We hope this sofa upcycling guide has given you a way to turn your couch into the one of your dreams. Also, don’t forget there are many more ways to hack your sofa which would be too long for this article.

 

For more inspiration, check out Comfort Works to see what they can do for your sofa.

----------- 

You might also like: The Playbook For Your Living Room Upgrade