How To Fix a Saggy Sofa

Tonya Diehl
by Tonya Diehl
2 Materials
We bought our couch at Ashely Furniture almost 6 years ago. I still really like couch, but a couple months ago I couldn't help but notice it was looking a little tired. It was suffering from something I like to call "Saggy Sofa Syndrome." Not wanting to spend the money on a new couch, I decided to take matters into my own hands & bring new life to our tired little sofa. Here's what I did....
I gave our living room sofa a little makeover! It’s looking pretty now, but don’t be deceived! Just a few days ago, it was suffering from Saggy Sofa Syndrome.
We’ve had our living room sofa for almost 6 years now. We purchased it at Ashley furniture & believe it or not, I still really like it. Or at least I like it when it’s perky….


The saggy couch…I’m not real fond of it! Can you blame me?!
The first thing I did for this makeover was wash all of our couch cushion & throw pillow covers! This was pretty easy to do since all of our cushion covers have zippers on them. The cushions on the back of our couch do not come off, but they do still have the zipper enclosures underneath. I bought a 10lb box of Poly-Fil at our local Walmart store for $20.00 and used it to add more stuffing to the back cushions. I just unzipped the cushions & stuffed! Easy peasy!! You can see by looking at the picture below, that this in itself, made a HUGE difference in our couch!
I also used the Poly-Fil to re-stuff my throw pillow covers.
As far as the seat cushions go, I perked them up a bit using some Poly-Fil Quilt Batting. Again, I bought the batting at our local Walmart. It was around $9.00. I actually went through two packages on the couch. You can see the “before” photo of the cushion in the upper right hand corner of the photo below & the “after” photo underneath. I added 3 layers of quilt batting to the cushion before putting it back into it’s cover. To prevent the quilt batting from shifting inside the cover, I secured each layer with a spray adhesive that I purchased at Hobby Lobby. I simply sprayed a layer of the adhesive between each layer of quilt batting.
Here is what the couch looked like when I was finished. Much, much better!
Tonya Diehl
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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  • Julie Hunter Julie Hunter on Jan 13, 2023

    Thank you for your post. I also have a sofa and chair from Ashley furniture that I don’t want to part with. So this is helpful. Any ideas on the sag of the spring area on the base? Have used plywood underlay underlay n previous furniture don’t really care for that. It’s to stiff! Thank you!


    Julie

  • Tanya E Tanya E on Apr 25, 2023

    This is a question??? Will this work with leather furniture??? Please HELP 😕

  • Eng91673149 Eng91673149 on Mar 05, 2024

    The back of my sofa is saggy but I do not have a zipper to open to stuff it ,what can I do

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  • Susan Monroe Susan Monroe on Sep 26, 2022

    Sagging really sucks! I was told by a furniture store to be sure to add it to the back side of the back cushions to make it less lumpy. Also, you can use an inexpensive thin bed pillow to stuff behind the back cushions instead of loose poly fill.

  • Marcam1977 Marcam1977 on Oct 09, 2022

    Hi Tonya, this isn't really a question, but comments I had to make. Thank you SO much for this post! I too have had the "droopy/sleepy" sofa syndrome. It's awful really when overall, your sofa is still not looking so bad! I've used the "board" under the seating area hack. That helped somewhat. But I LOVE your idea of the batting. Fabulous 😍 I actually have one back cushion that has flattened a tad but the seating, well, now that's where your great idea will definitely help MY tired sofa have life again. And save my back! Oh, and gives me another good reason to update my throw pillow covers lol. My husband says, "Oh gosh, MORE pillows?" 😂 Oh well 😉 PS - your sofa still looks great!

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