$1 → $1M · 5 tiers

Sofa.

Five sofas, five completely different relationships with comfort, design, and the people who make them.

Roadside-find futon

Material: Flatpack pine frame held together by mismatched bolts, foam cushion that has lost roughly 60% of its original thickness, polyester cover with at least one mystery stain.
Function: Folds into a bed if you're brave. Provides surface for laundry, cats, and the occasional friend who missed the last train.
History: Made with scrap but with soul — somebody bought this for $80 in 2019, used it through three flatshares, and left it on the sidewalk with a 'free, still works' sign. You picked it up at 2 AM. It is now your sofa.
What bumps the price: A throw blanket to hide the stain (+$15), a real foam topper to add 4 cm of mercy to the seat (+$30), bolts that match each other (+$5).

Material: Solid-pine frame, polyurethane foam in three densities, removable washable cotton-blend cover in 'storm grey'.
Function: Three-seater with a lounge end. Survives one cat, two house-moves, and an unknown number of pizza accidents.
History: IKEA introduced the modular sofa concept in 1976 to their Swedish catalogue. The KIVIK family alone has sold over 12 million units globally; it might be the most-sat-on sofa design of the 21st century.
What bumps the price: Replacement cover in linen blend (+$120), genuine IKEA chaise extension (+$180), a delivery service that doesn't make you assemble it yourself (+$60).

Material: Top-grain leather upholstery in Charme Tan, kiln-dried hardwood frame, sinuous-spring suspension, tufted bench seat, splayed walnut tapered legs.
Function: The Instagram apartment sofa. Looks like a million dollars in a 200-square-foot studio.
History: Article launched the Sven in 2016 as a direct-to-consumer answer to the $4,000 Restoration Hardware version. They cut the retail middle-man and tripled their profit margin. The Sven became a millennial design cliché within 18 months — and stayed comfortable enough that nobody minded.
What bumps the price: Bench cushion replaced with three separate cushions (+$200), full-aniline leather upgrade from semi-aniline (+$400), 4-seater length instead of standard 3-seater (+$600).

Material: Modular polyurethane foam blocks in custom upholstery (typically a velvet-cotton blend), removable covers, lacquered MDF base, hand-assembled in Novedrate, Italy.
Function: The 'Chesterfield meets bean-bag' look. Reconfigurable into roughly twelve different layouts. Exceptionally comfortable for what looks like a giant tufted brick.
History: Patricia Urquiola designed the Tufty-Time in 2005 for B&B Italia. It became the favourite sofa of every hotel-lounge designer on Earth and shows up in roughly 40% of luxury Airbnb listings. An entire interior-design vocabulary copies it.
What bumps the price: Velvet upholstery upgrade from cotton (+$1,500), genuine certificate of authenticity (+$300), B&B's white-glove delivery service that builds it in your living room (+$500).

Material: Hand-stitched cattle hide on hand-buffed stainless steel frame, original 1929 leather aged to a mahogany patina, restored by a single specialist workshop in Berlin.
Function: Museum-grade seating. One of fewer than a dozen original units that survived World War II — and the only one with documented provenance from the original 1929 Barcelona International Exposition.
History: Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich designed the Barcelona collection for the German Pavilion at the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition — a temporary building meant for a single summer. Most of the original furniture was either destroyed when the pavilion was dismantled or scattered into private collections. This sofa was rediscovered in a Buenos Aires estate in 2018 and is the only known surviving 1929 sofa in original condition.
What bumps the price: Documented provenance with the original 1929 manifest (+$300K), restoration certificate from Knoll's archive (+$200K), a matching Barcelona chair from the same exposition (+$1.2M).