So I just moved to NYC and I am looking to save some space with a futon but I have heard that they can be uncomfortable for daily-sleep use.
I was wondering if any of you have experience with a particular brand, model, etc that would be a) practical to have delivered into my nyc apartment b) decent looking, c) comfortable.
Thanks!
My brother has recently bought one of these from Ikea, and I sleep on it in his spare room whenever I stay over. I can happily say it gives me the best night’s sleep I have these days. I can’t imagine it would cause long-term problems.
Not a futon, but I’ve been using a king-size air mattress I got from target, and I think it’s one of the most comfortable beds I’ve been on (well, with sufficient sheets covering it).
It’s cheap ($20) and also amazingly portable!
I guess your going to get differing opinions. I don’t think they’re particularly comfortable to sit on, much less sleep on. They’re only a few inches thick, aren’t they? I slept on one a few times and it wasn’t uncomfortable but it wasn’t something I’d want use instead of sleeping on a mattress. This was several years ago, and they may have improved.
How about something like a daybed that has an actual mattress.
The futon I had when I was in the US had exactly nothing to do with a Japanese futon.
I’ve slept on both, and both were perfectly fine to sleep on. But given as a Japanese futon is about an inch and a half thick, while as the American futon I had was essentially just a mattress that could be bent into a couch, I can’t say that there’s any reason to trust that the decades of daily use by the Japanese people of the Japanese style futon should give you any reason to trust an American-style thick futon. I might just have gotten lucky with the one.
Thing is though, Japanese futons are designed to be used in conjunction with tatami floors. Wouldn’t work on our hard wooden/cement floors in the west. Which is why you need a slightly thicker futon mattress, and the slatted base is required not just to make it springy, but also to stop the mattress from getting damp on the bottom.
jimm, looking at the picture you posted it looks like when the futon is out you put a mattress on top. Is that what you do? The ad says mattress not included. What type of mattres do you get to put on top?
In 1984 I moved in with a g/f with a futon
Perhaps in Japan they are Ok, somebody replaces them without you noticing, but for a smelly, uncomfortable bed they are superb, and that was after I put my carpenterary skills into making a base.
Get a firm mattress - preferably one with a bit of bounce.
The futon is the mattress. Any frame or anything is in addition to the futon mattress. This is something that gets lost in translation (if you’ll pardon the pun). Traditional Japanese futons are thin (2-3" thick) mattresses, that are slept on directly on the sprung tatami mat, then get rolled up every morning and stowed away. Over here we don’t have the tatami, so we use a wooden/metal frame of some kind, and our futons (i.e. mattresses) are a bit thicker.
gaaaak mrAru and I had one of those. The mattress slides off when you use it as a sofa, and the stupid thing is a pain in the ass to reformat from sofa to bed.
We were mucking around with ikea sofa Fagelbo
We fell in love with it. You grab a little flappy thingy and pull, and the long part slides out and you lay down the back cushion and it turns into a double bed. When it is in sofa format, the short seat lifts up and you stash the comforters and sheets in it. We want one in the worse way - as soon as we can really afford it we are going to replace the futon sofa of death with it.
when i bought my futon, i found out there are 2 options.
option 1. the 8" futon. this is the one to get if your futon is mostly a couch with occasional guest sleeping. you will feel the slats when sleeping on it.
option 2. the 10" futon. this is the mostly sleeping option. you don’t feel the slats, and it is a bit of a struggle to bend it into a couch.
i had the 8" futon, when a cat-incident happened, i found out about the 10" futon. so much better to sleep on. it is a bit more expensive but well worth it.
Get as thick a mattress as you can find and you will be fine. Since my futon was also my bed for a short time, some of the best money I ever spent during my college years was upgrading to the thicker variety.