7th Avenue Sofa Review: Do Water-Repellent Sofas Live Up to the Hype?

Getting hands-on with the 7th Avenue

Choosing your Sofa

As previously mentioned, 7th Avenue is known for its modular furniture. The company offers sofas in a range of configurations and pieces, meaning you could get a two-seater with double ottomans, a traditional three-seater, or even a ten-seat-wide mega-sofa for whatever reason. Want to flip your leg rest from one side to the other? That’s not a problem. Opted for white upholstery initially but three years and a couple of kids later thinking you’d rather have black? The company will sell you all new covers so you can make your couch look brand new. You can even pick whether you’d like your back cushions to be soft, medium, or firm—which, again, you can always change down the road as well, after a few months of sitting on it and figuring out what’s what. 

Since 7th Avenue is still relatively new, it does have a reasonably limited range of colors and fabrics, though it’s always expanding what it offers. As of right now, the couches are available in pure white, black, soft gray, and a kind of eggshell natural white. It’s worth noting that all of 7th Avenue’s upholstery choices are water-repellent and stain-resistant, and they’ll easily repel water, coffee, pet (or toddler) urine, ketchup, and even red wine. 

7th Avenue is mainly online, but the company does have a few showrooms in California, Nevada, Texas, and New York where you can go and sit on one of their couches so you can test out scale, cushions, and see the color options. We went to the one in L.A. to order ours and it was really eye-opening, just in terms of being able to actually figure out how big it would be in the space and what color we really liked. We went in loving black, but we left opting for soft gray three-seater sofa with an ottoman, which looks lovely in our space.

Delivery and construction 

Like so many companies, 7th Avenue has dealt with supply chain issues. While some sofas that you might order from the company will show up in two to four weeks, it took ours a couple of months to arrive because the gray was, at the time, a relatively new fabric to the brand. In most cases delivery will be two to six weeks. 

Because we live in the L.A. area, 7th Avenue’s local delivery team brought it to our house and set it up entirely within the span of about 15 minutes. They also moved our existing sofa to the garage, just because they’re nice.

The sofa came in a bunch of boxes and the delivery team just snapped it together, poofed out cushions, and voila. It did take about a day or so for the vacuum-packed cushions to really expand to their full potential, but that was fine.

Living with the 7th Avenue Sofa

Our 7th Avenue Sofa is very comfortable, in part because we chose the medium-soft cushion options, per my husband’s request. I think I might opt, in the future, to bump the cushion behind me on my end of the sofa to medium-firm, but the beauty of a 7th Avenue sofa is that I could totally do that. It’s like one of those adjustable mattresses for couples who disagree on how they like to sleep. It’s my choice!

I’ll note that our 7th Avenue Sofa doesn’t quite have the back support our previous Crate & Barrel sofa did, probably because it has a lower back and then pillows to support sitters rather than a traditional solid cushion on the back. The three throw pillows that came with the 7th Avenue couch can make up for that, though, especially if you have the couch against a wall and can throw them behind where you’re sitting for a little head or neck support. 

Our 7th Avenue sectional is great for sprawling out. I’ve taken hours-long naps on it, and my husband loves to kick back on his chaise-like lounger every night. I personally find the ottoman portion to be a little wide for me to climb up on—it’s like I’m getting into a twin bed from the very end or something, the way we have it situated with our existing coffee table—but I’m also perfectly happy to just pull up legs up on the other end, or kick them over and just rest my feet on the side of the ottoman. 

Our 7th Avenue sectional is great for sprawling out. I’ve taken hours-long naps on it, and my husband loves to kick back on his chaise-like lounger every night.

The sofa feels well-made, and given how much jumping my 4-year-old twins have done on it, it seems pretty durable as well. Our kids have spilled juice on it, kicked their muddy shoes all over it, and thrown the pillows all over the ground and all of those messes have cleaned off the water-repellent and stain-resistant fabric pretty quickly with a damp towel. My husband, on the other hand, got chocolate ice cream on it, and that’s been a longer process with stain removers and so on. It’s fine for now because we can just flip the cushion over if it doesn’t ultimately come out, though—or order another cover just for that one cushion. 

The sofa feels well-made, and given how much jumping my 4-year-old twins have done on it, it seems pretty durable as well.

When it comes to cleaning, if you want to give your 7th Avenue couch a full refresh, all covers are removable and washable—7th Avenue says you can even throw them in the washing machine. 

I do have two quibbles with the sofa, having used it for a couple of months now: First is that I don’t think it looks quite as factory fresh and picture perfect as it did the day it came off the truck. I don’t know if that’s just because the cushions are always slightly askew now and tossed around or if it’s gotten a little sort of squished, but it doesn’t have the formal put-together nature that our Crate couch did. 

My other quibble is that the ottoman’s top cushion isn’t actually attached to the ottoman, which is great for when you want to clean it but annoying for all other times. I feel like every time someone uses it, when I walk by it later the cushion is pushed 2 inches down the ottoman, meaning I’m constantly seeing two inches of flat, gray ottoman base. (Since this review, 7th Avenue now has an anti-slip mat for ottomans, which should solve this problem.)