I don’t know if it’s a midwest thing or if most people just really don’t care about what their house looks like. Growing up, couches were these oversized, floppy, sad brown beasts that remind me of the dog van in Dumb & Dumber (according to the holiday pics my friends post on facebook, people are still buying or passing these terrible couches down generation to generation). 9 out of 10 times they were also wayyyy too big for the room and paired with whatever crappy tv stand and end tables acquired in college. WHAT a combo.

Now, it’s one thing to do this in your first apartment because no one has any money to go out and buy all new stuff. I am actually talking about the people that buy a mcmansion and then have no money left to buy updated furniture. That’s just poor planning.

We’ve had our fair share of Ikea couches over the years, but when we bought our first house we were ready for an upgrade. At the time there weren’t a ton of choices for modern furniture, we did our research and decided to go with a Joybird sectional.

Joybird Review

Overall, Joybird makes some great mid century modern style furniture that looks good in almost any living room. The couches are the right scale for modest sized houses, particularly the apartment collection. The fabric swatches are an absolute treat to get in the mail and they have a wonderful color selection to fit any mood. Let’s get to the details of the Eliot Sectional in Essence Ash pet friendly fabric.

Joybird Eliot Apartment Sectional with Bumper

Fabric: Essence Ash

Wood Stain: Medium

Dimensions Overall: 90" x 64" Height: 33"

Seating: 76" x 53" x 18"

Arm Height: 3" x 25"

Sofa Seating: 22"d

Leg: 7.5"h

Current Price: $3,279 (although, in 2016 it was $2,699 and we got 20% off so we paid $2,375 with tax + free shipping) -- more on this later

Telephone Table

Self Watering Pots

Copper Candles

Joybird Sectional Pros:

Couch has modern, clean lines and looks great in any space
Cushions have held up well, no sagging or dents even after a million hours of netflix over the years.
Great option for smaller aka normal sized homes with the “apartment sized” collection.
Free fabric swatch kit with tons of options sent directly to your house. This is a great way to see how the fabric looks in your environment, and with different types of lighting throughout the day.
Love that you can see what stage of production your piece is in, it took some of the annoyance out of normally just waiting 6-8 weeks and then a couch appears.
Usually, you can get 25% off your first purchase.
Joybird has a Giving Back program. “For each item sold, we've committed to planting more trees than were used in the manufacturing of that item.

Joybird Sectional Cons:

Pet & Kid friendly fabric - not at all sure what they mean by this. It doesn’t clean well, doesn’t hide stains.
- Our cat has still managed to pull some threads out
- Our kid has spilled on it and it leaves rings even if you immediately clean it up
- I regret buying the tufted cushions because you can’t remove the covers. If I had purchased non tufted I would try to remove them and wash them on a gentle cycle and hang them out to dry to see if I could refresh them a bit.
It would be great if there was an impact report available on the website to see details on how many trees have been planted etc
- If they are actually concerned about the environment offering reasonable services to help extend the life of the couches would be better.
- Cushion replacement for this couch is $300 for the chaise and $200 for each seat cushion ($700 to replace the bottom cushions which are the most beat up or $1500 for all of the cushions - which is basically a new cheap couch)
No longer an independent business selling direct to consumers as they sold to La-Z-Boy in 2018. Definitely wondering if this has anything to do with the price increase of 21% since 2016. Either Joybird wasn’t making enough to make decent profit margins to stay in business or La-Z-Boy is supremely greedy. Afterall, La-Z-Boy’s revenue in 2019 was $1.75B

Would I buy a Joybird...I mean La-Z-Boy couch again? Probably not. There is more competition out there and while the couch has generally held up well I wish there was an economical way to clean it or even add new modules to it like some of the newer offerings.

We replaced it with the Apt2B Catalina Reversible Chaise Sleeper Sofa Bed. It’s so comfortable my mother in law also bought it. You can read the full review here.