Sofa beds present something of an eternal challenge for furniture designers: many have tried but few have succeeded. You can understand the attraction: they make intuitive sense – especially in smaller houses and apartments where a spare room may not be on offer – but they invariably don’t manage to do well at either.
Enter the Slideaway Sofa Bed by young design company Eva, which has just launched in Aotearoa. Good-looking, well-made and comfortable, it’s a timber-framed sofa with a loosely mid-century feel, which converts to a very comfortable bed. “We wanted to design something that people would be proud to have front and centre in their living room,” says Tom Shaw, head of design at Eva, “not tucked away in their second bedroom.”
Eva is a furniture brand that focuses on accessible, thoughtful design: all their products are focussed on user experience, and intended to solve problems – from high-quality materials to no-tool assembly. They’re functional, and made to last.
The Slideaway Sofa Bed took the Eva team two years to develop, and uses intel from making both beds and sofas. Designed to be assembled and disassembled with no tools, the design challenges the notion that sofa beds are neither a good bed, nor a good sofa.
It features a frame made from sustainably harvested hard wood and birch ply, and sofa cushions filled with a combination of chipped memory foam and medium-density foam, wrapped in a duvet-like layer for the ultimate in comfort. The covers are removable, and machine washable; you can add an extra set if you want to change things up without buying a whole new piece of furniture.
To turn it from a sofa to a bed, the slatted base slides out – which does away with a clumsy metal mechanism – and the cushions slide down to create the mattress: as well as bed and sofa mode, it also features a day-bed function, for serious snoozing.
While Eva’s full range isn’t available in New Zealand – the sofa bed is available online for next-day delivery in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and weekly delivery Ōtautahi Christchurch – the brand is eyeing up further products for Aotearoa. “We’d love to introduce the rest of the Eva family too,” says co-founder Amanda Niu.
Eva Slideaway Sofa Bed
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