DreamSofa Reports Increase in Furniture Orders Specified for Home-Working Use

BEVERLY HILLS, CA, UNITED STATES, September 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — DreamSofa, a direct-to-consumer custom furniture manufacturer, reports that a growing share of its order consultations now include requirements related to working from home, and has published specification guidance for buyers whose primary living-room seating is used during part of the workday.

Workplace surveys and federal labor statistics continue to show that a substantial share of U.S. knowledge workers work from home for some or all of the week. The first phase of that shift produced a documented increase in demand for desks and task chairs. DreamSofa says the effect on upholstered living-room seating has been slower to appear but is now visible in how customers describe their requirements at the point of order: laptop comfort, sitting posture across multi-hour periods, video-call backgrounds, and household members working from the sofa rather than at a desk.

The company says that language was largely absent from its consultations before 2020.

“Nobody set out to redesign the living room,” said a DreamSofa spokesperson. “The workday moved into it gradually. What has changed more recently is that buyers name it when they order, rather than treating it as a temporary arrangement.”

How work use changes seating specification
Extended seated work places different demands on a sofa than evening use, and DreamSofa says those differences correspond to specifiable construction choices.

Cushion firmness and resilience affect posture over long periods. Higher-resiliency seat cores resist the gradual slouch that soft lounge cushions permit across a multi-hour session, and back cushions with more internal structure support an upright position rather than a reclined one.

Seat depth works in the opposite direction from current lounge trends. A shallower seat allows a working posture with the feet on the floor and the lower back in contact with the backrest. Deeper seats, widely specified for lounging, require the sitter either to perch forward without back support or to recline further than is practical for typing.

Arm height and width become functional rather than decorative dimensions, since arms are used to support forearms during laptop use and to hold a laptop tray or a cup.

None of these preferences is unusual in itself, the company notes. What is new is buyers specifying them at the point of purchase. DreamSofa says mixed-specification modular orders — a firmer section within an otherwise softer sectional — have become a common way for households to meet a work requirement without changing the seating for everyone else.

Layout, zoning and camera sightlines
Home working has also affected where furniture is placed. Video calls made living rooms visible to colleagues, and DreamSofa says a subset of buyers now plans seating placement around camera sightlines, either orienting a sofa to produce a usable background or using modular sections and open-backed configurations to separate a working area from a living area without partitions.

The company describes this as a residential version of a practice already common among architects and designers, who use modular seating to define zones within open floor plans. In apartments where one room functions as an office during the day and a living room in the evening, a reconfigurable system can be rearranged between weekday and weekend layouts, or altered when a household’s work pattern changes.
Use hours and durability

The less visible consequence, according to DreamSofa, is arithmetic. A sofa in a two-commuter household might see three or four hours of daily use, concentrated in the evening. The same sofa in a household where someone works from home can see eight to twelve, as work hours are added to leisure hours.

That represents a corresponding increase in compression cycles on cushion cores, load cycles on frames and suspension, and abrasion on fabric surfaces. DreamSofa says the increase is sufficient to shorten the service life of lower-specification seating considerably, and that it directs buyers in this position toward the same specifications it recommends for multigenerational and pet-owning households: high-resiliency cushion cores, fabrics with high double-rub abrasion ratings, and kiln-dried hardwood frame construction.

“The use profile of a sofa in a home-working household has more in common with commercial seating than with residential seating as it was specified twenty years ago,” the spokesperson said. “That is a construction question before it is a comfort question.”

Buying behavior
DreamSofa says the pattern it observes is consistent with households treating home working as a settled arrangement rather than a provisional one. Rather than improvising with lap desks while waiting for a full return to offices, buyers are specifying primary furniture for dual use at the point of purchase.

The company links this to a shift documented in its 2026 Mid-Year Consumer Insights Report, in which buyers reported evaluating furniture on cost per year of use rather than on purchase price alone.

Stated limits
DreamSofa is explicit about the boundaries of the guidance. Ergonomics literature is consistent that sustained, focused desk work is best performed at a properly configured workstation, and the company says it tells customers that no sofa specification substitutes for a task chair across a full eight-hour working day.

The guidance addresses the portion of the workday that does not take place at a desk in any case — reading, calls, review work, the hour before dinner — and households where a dedicated office does not exist. Supporting an upright posture for ninety minutes is a different engineering target from supporting one for eight hours.

The company pairs its specification guidance with posture recommendations: feet flat on the floor, the laptop raised on an arm or tray rather than resting directly on the lap, and a change of position each hour.

About DreamSofa
DreamSofa is a direct-to-consumer custom furniture manufacturer specializing in made-to-order sofas, sectionals, modular seating systems, and sleeper sofas built on kiln-dried hardwood frames. Seat firmness, depth, height, and configuration are specified per order through its FlexForm Sizing system. Every piece is backed by a lifetime frame warranty and a 100-day home trial. More information is available at www.DreamSofa.com.

Remote and hybrid work prevalence referenced above reflects publicly reported workplace surveys and federal labor statistics. Ergonomics guidance referenced reflects standard published recommendations. Remaining statements describe DreamSofa’s own products, specifications, and customer observations

Maria Gonzalez
MGP
+1 305-204-8988
email us here

Media gallery