Most of us have experienced a sofa bed at least once in our lives and the experience is usually quite memorable. However, it’s not necessarily a good thing to remember. Traditional sofa beds have often been found to be too hard, uncomfortable, and far from providing a comfortable nighttime sleep experience. Most of the complaints we bring up about our sleeping experience tend to be, “I can feel that bar on my back” or “The springs are pinching me in the side.” Fortunately, sleeper designs have come a long way in recent years and this article will look at a mechanism developed by Robert and Barbara Tiffany for an American manufacturer of Comfort Sleepers. Their goal is to address and fix the problems within the sleeper industry and build a better sleeper.
Robert and Barbara Tiffany’s furniture design collaboration began in 1976. It was in this year that convertible polyurethane foam convertible folding seats were introduced to the American public. The design was very successful and was commercialized through Sherwood Corporation. Over the years that followed, this design team has been recognized with various awards and distinctions for excellence in furniture design within the furniture industry. It was in 2001 that the Tiffanys were awarded the Daphne Award for furniture upholstered by a convertible sofa. It was this innovative new patented design introduced into sleeper construction that moved away from traditional sleeper construction and ushered in a new trend for more comfortable sofa beds that could actually now be considered comfortable.
The Tiffany 24/7 mechanism takes a fairly streamlined approach and moves away from traditional bars and springs. The mechanism incorporates a newer design in the sense that it uses space more efficiently. The 24/7 mechanism allows the sleeper surface to be very close to the sleeper arms and back panel, where older designs require more wasted space between the arms and the sofa back to contain the bulkier mechanisms. This means that the Tiffany 24/7 bedroom takes up less space than other models, allowing better use of space in both length and width.
Another feature of the Tiffany 24/7 mechanism is its operation. The system consists of three flat sections without bars. Sturdy straps at the top of the front panel seat section allow for quick removal from the bed. The panel at the head of the sleeper folds into the back of the sofa and the other two panels rest below where the seat cushions are placed. Due to the way these panels fold into the unit, there is less weight transfer from the unit, making it easier to operate from sofa to bed and vice versa.
The mattresses used in the Tiffany 24/7 Comfort Sleeper are a far cry from the old inline spring systems used in traditional sleepers. This more modern design incorporates newer foam and memory foam mattresses introduced as premium mattresses within the bedding industry, while offering a more sophisticated alternative to the cumbersome older coil units. These mattresses work seamlessly with this sleeping system and, with the elimination of springs and bars, they are believed to offer better pressure relief to the back and neck regions during sleep.
Sofa beds have long been considered a viable option for spaces that needed to be doubled for both sitting and sleeping. Unfortunately, many traditional sleepers, while comfortable as a sofa, were anything but sleeper. However, in recent years, innovators such as Robert and Barbara Tiffany have rewritten how sofa beds are perceived and used by introducing the Tiffany 24/7 Comfort Sleeper mechanism that helped eliminate the bars and springs that many did not like in living rooms. conventional sleepers and introduced a better engineered mechanism and sleeping surface that allow the use of modern memory foam and memory foam mattresses.