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Home Reserve – The Life Proof Couch Review

November 25, 2021 /

Don’t mind the empty walls – we decided to move during the busiest season of life yet and things are moving slowly. BUT, we chose to try out a Home Reserve couch as our first purchase for our new house and we are so pleased! Read along for all the details.

I had been eyeing a LoveSac for awhile but when I finally priced out what I’d need….. Ten thousand dollars made my eyes bulge out of my head. I started researching and came across Home Reserve. For a quarter of the price, it seemed like everything I wanted!

The biggest thing to note about this couch before you buy, YOU put this thing together. It comes in all its’ pieces, with great instructions. My husband and I enjoyed the process but you need to be prepared for the time and muscle it takes and the mess you’ll be cleaning up before the room looks like this!

I wish I had captured more of the process but here’s a glimpse at what it looked like during.

All-in-all, we love the couch. 100% worth the effort.

What we love:

  • Completely customizable – everything about this couch is customizable and changeable. You pick fabric, color, cushion style, arm style, and every piece. The website had a base layout I liked and was able to quickly click and then add an armless unit to fit my space. We ordered fabric samples before deciding on material which brings me to my next point.
  • SPILLPROOF and WASHABLE – we tested this out on the sample and were so impressed. Grape juice rolled right off. We chose a light color – a big risk in our house – we have 2 toddlers and are just a couple months away from having 3 under 3 along with 2 hound dogs who drag in everything from outside, slobber everywhere, and shed like it’s their job. But, we haven’t had any issues keeping it clean. Liquid really does wipe right off. Our older hound was nice enough to tinkle on it a few times the week we set it up to test this out and my girls have splattered milk on it a handful of times since. Wipes. Right. Off. We have had a few incidents of things getting smeared onto it and everything has come off in seconds with a little spritz of Folex spot cleaner. BUT, say all the life being lived on this couch does eventually leaves its’ dinge on the light fabric, I can take every piece of fabric off and throw it in the washing machine. This is revolutionary. The hours I have spent scrubbing, extracting, and straight up experimenting on couches past are finally over. If I ever get tired of the color, I can just order covers in a different one.
  • Changeable. We chose the layout we wanted for the couch. But then it was Christmas time and I thought the tree should go where part of our couch is. Well, I just picked the cushions up, disconnected a couple pieces, and switched it up. Turned out the spot I has planned didn’t work for the tree and so we just switched the couch right back.
  • STORAGE – can you ever have enough? You can lift every single seat to find a storage spot. Seasonal throw pillow no longer steal closet space here!
  • Stylish and comfortable. This couch replaced reclining sofas so we were worried we’d lose a bit of comfort. There’s nothing like reclining, right? Nope! I get cozier on this couch. The cushions are sturdy and soft. You don’t sink in so deep you can’t get up but they are also as soft and cushion-y as can be. Our house gathers people of all sizes and everyone has said they’re comfy on it, and, it looks great. We didn’t have to sacrifice style for comfort the way you do with reclining sofas.
  • Easily replaceable. This is huge! I spend more time on our couch than anyone. I work from home and have had a baby every year for almost 3 years in a row now and my babies don’t get set done for their first few months. We do a whole lot of couch cuddling and newborn naps. My spot on our reclining sofa was WORN OUT. The spring in the back had snapped from me rocking my youngest to calm her (she was one of those screaming babies who needed a LOT of extra help to calm down or sleep, ya know?) and the cushion on the arm had worn down so much that there was just a sharp corner in my side when I settled in. I couldn’t fix those things but if anything similar happens to this couch, or my kids jump where they shouldn’t and snap a seat base in half, or my dogs chew a hole through it, I can order just the replacement pieces I need and it’ll be as good as new!
  • CUSTOMER SERVICE. Wow. I can’t say enough about how wonderful their customer service has been. About an hour after I placed my order, a rep emailed me to ask if I’d like them to send one unit as a trial before committing to the whole 8-seat sectional and the trial piece was delivered within a couple days for us to put together and fall in love with before going forward with the remaining pieces. When the entire order arrived and we put it together, I noticed the foam pieces for the arm rests weren’t the correct shape – they were squared instead of rounded like I had wanted – so the fabric pieces didn’t fit properly over them and Justin busted a seam in a cushion shoving it into its’ fabric cover. I emailed Home Reserve about these issues at 1:30am when I finished assembly and by the time I checked my email the next morning, they had already responded to apologize and had shipped the replacements. Within a few days, I had the proper pieces and all was well. Everyone I worked with was so kind and efficient and seemed to go out of their way to make it a good experience. The fact that I never had wait for a quiet moment in my house to dial a number just to wait on hold was amazing. A+ customer service!

Cons (kinda)

  • Assembly. We really didn’t mind this part so it wasn’t necessarily and con for us but I wouldn’t categorize it as a pro and it’s definitely mentionable. My husband and I worked together to get the 1st 5 pieces together and it took about 2 hours. I did the last 2 myself and it took me another 2 hours. So, teamwork is definitely recommended and I’d suggest a teammate with muscle. There are a lot of screws and it’s a tight twist. We used a power drill for some of it but our kids were sleeping and the dog lost his mind every time it came on so we switched to the manual method pretty quickly. The thing about assembly that I would absolutely categorize as a con was the mess. They basically delivered 7 boxes of cut plywood to our door and only the outer sides of each piece were sanded so there were plywood shavings EVERYWHERE when we finished up. I did not love that.
  • Unsanded plywood. Again, only the outer sides of the wood pieces are sanded – the sides that touch the fabric. I get the reasoning for this but it also makes the storage spaces less functional than they could be. When I take my Fall throw pillows out next year, I’ll have to vacuum plywood shavings off of them. It also limits what I could store in the spaces. If I store toys in there and tell my toddler to get one, I run the risk of a splinter. If I store a blanket, I’d have to wash it before I could actually use it. So, while the storage is really nice to have and I am using it, it’s storage for things I don’t need to get to all the time and it’s not storage I’d ask my kids to use. If it didn’t interfere with structural integrity, I would suggest that Home Reserve start sanding as much of the wood as they can to make the assembly cleaner and usability of the couch a bit safer.
  • Catches fur. This is a con of our specific fabric choice. There are dozens of fabric options and I’m sure they don’t all have this issue. We made the rule to keep our dogs off of this couch when we got it and they’ve done really well staying in their own nice beds next to it (we cover the couch with laundry baskets as a solution to the tinkling while we’re away issue) but I still find myself vacuuming a good amount of fur off of it every day. Our dogs have that short coarse fur and though they aren’t the ones lounging on the couch, it comes off of our clothes and floats in the air and finds a way to weave itself into the fabric fibers. I vacuum a couple times a day anyway so it’s not a huge deal for me to run it across the couch to get the few furs that made their way there but, if you have a dog that spends time on the couch, you don’t vacuum a lot, and it bothers you to have the fur there, I’d imagine you’d be losing your mind a bit over the way it latches on. I recommend this fur roller to everyone because it is a miracle worker on a smooth fabric like leather but I haven’t had as much luck with it on this material. It works but not as easily because of the weave in this fabric and I have reverted back to the fur attachment on my vacuum. I’ll add a close up of the fabric below. It’s beautiful, soft, and the color is gorgeous!
  • Seat depth. Again, this is not a con for us and we find it very comfy but if you’re really tall or just prefer a deeper couch, it may be an issue for you. We chose this couch because we wanted ample seating in our humbly sized living room and this is PERFECT for just that and is exactly what this furniture is created to be.

So, overall, this couch is exactly what we needed and we love it more and more the more we use it. It’s holding up really well to our household and we know anything that happens to it can be easily remedied. I’ve been suggesting it to everyone I know. Next time you need a couch, you need Home Reserve. It is beautiful. It is functional. It is life proof.

Our Choices:

Home Reserve

Laney Sectional

Maltese Silver Gray

We used “Layout 4 with Ottoman” and added an armless unit. Listed is every unit we have:

  • 4 armless
  • 1 right
  • 1 left
  • 1 corner
  • 1 standard ottoman