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When you’re looking for a custom sofa, it’s important to do your research first. Today, we’re comparing Joybird Sofas and What A Room for those high-quality sofas that make a house a home.
What A Room is a fully custom sofa brand built in California, with a showroom in San Jose, California, where buyers can see and sit on sofas and sectionals and feel fabrics before ordering. Joybird, owned by La-Z-Boy, takes a more configurable approach, built around modular pieces and a 3D room planner, with showrooms and partner studios across the US.
Below, we compare What A Room vs Joybird across construction quality, fabric range, order experience, and price, so you can figure out which one actually fits your style and budget!
Custom vs. Configurable: What “Customizable” Actually Means
“Customizable” can mean different things to different people. For some, it’s picking a fabric, maybe choosing which side the arms go on a sectional, and calling it done. But there’s also such a thing as fully customizable, picking the exact size for your space, plus fabric, legs, and cushions.
That’s the What A Room model. Joybird, on the other hand, is a modular sofa builder. You configure the setup that works for your space, from a standalone sofa to a full sectional, and see exact measurements and a visualization of the finished piece before you buy, thanks to their 3D space planner.
Both brands let you pick fabric, legs, and finishes. But the similarities end there.
Configuring modular pieces isn’t the same as building a sofa around your exact dimensions. Joybird’s customization works within a set of pre-built components, not by resizing them, so you’re choosing from options like arm style, chaise length, or number of seats, all built to standard dimensions.
Meanwhile, every sofa built at What A Room’s California manufacturing facility starts as a blank frame sized to what you actually need, whether that’s a small living room or a narrow space. If your space doesn’t quite match a standard sectional length, or you’re trying to fit a sofa around a bay window or a doorway, that’s exactly the problem full customization solves and modular building doesn’t.
What A Room builds each sofa from scratch to your exact measurements. Joybird lets you configure and combine pre-set modular pieces into the layout you want.
Sofa Quality and Construction Compared
Joybird’s reviews are mostly positive on comfort. The company’s cushion foam has a higher density than a lot of the industry, similar to What A Room. Design-wise, Joybird leans into retro and mid-century modern style.
Joybird’s reviews get a little mixed around quality control. Across Reddit threads and YouTube reviews, people point to inconsistency in fabric and seam construction, including reports of seams unraveling after normal use, alongside comments like “love the look but the build doesn’t match it.” Those complaints aren’t universal, plenty of Joybird owners share positive reviews, but just something to be aware of when looking to purchase one of their sofas.
At an average price around $1,800, that’s a fair trade for a lot of buyers looking for a good starter sofa rather than a piece they expect to keep for a decade or more.
What A Room’s sofas are an investment piece, and that starts with a quality build. Manufacturing happens in California, starting with a solid frame built from kiln-dried solid wood, the same construction method you’d expect from higher-end furniture makers who build for longevity rather than volume.
Like Joybird, they also use higher-density cushion foam. Production windows run around 4-5 weeks, and reviews are mostly positive on buying a sofa sight unseen, which says something given that most buyers are ordering online without ever sitting on the exact piece they’re getting.
Frames are also backed by a limited lifetime warranty, which is nice with a fully custom build than with a mass-produced one. Since each sofa is a one-off order rather than a run of identical pieces coming off a line, that warranty is a sign the company stands behind its own consistency.
Fabric Range and Pet-Friendliness
Both brands offer a wide range of fabric choices, but their approach differs a little. Both offer free fabric swatches, though Joybird offers unlimited swatches while What A Room’s swatch limit varies, so it’s worth confirming the current number directly with them. Both brands offer pet-friendly fabrics, though some Joybird reviews report pet scratches showing up on those fabrics sooner than expected.
What A Room offers more than 165 fabric options, and some are free of PFAS, PFOS, and other “forever” chemicals, a detail that’s a huge plus for buyers thinking about what’s actually touching their family and pets every day, not just how it looks and they also offer fabric lines that are liquid-repellent and machine washable. A pet-friendly fabric that resists scratching is useful. A fabric you can pull off and throw in the wash after a spill or an accident is different.
Order Experience and Lead Times
Joybird’s ordering experience is self-service. Their 3D planner and room scanner help you work out the configuration for your sofa and your space, and if you get stuck, a chat window connects you to a real person. Joybird also has showrooms and Partner Studios in other furniture stores throughout the US.
Production lead times run around 4-8 weeks for construction on made-to-order pieces, plus additional shipping time, with quicker delivery on in-stock pieces. Worth double-checking current estimates with a representative, since some reviews mention significantly longer wait times.
What A Room has one showroom, in San Jose, California. If you’re local to the Bay Area, you can visit in person, sit on the sofas, and go through the fabric options firsthand before you commit to a build. Outside the Bay Area, the whole process happens online, which is fairly standard for a fully custom furniture brand.
What A Room also offers free design services and 3D renderings to help with your sofa’s customization, so you’re not designing blind even without a showroom nearby. Sofas are manufactured on a 4-5 week production timeline, a tighter and more predictable window than Joybird’s.
Price Comparison: What You’re Actually Paying For
Joybird sofas and sectionals generally range from around $1,200 to $3,500, depending on size, fabric, and configuration, putting the brand solidly in the mid-price range. Given the design quality and free planning tools, a lot of buyers feel like they’re getting real value for a starter sofa at that price.
What A Room sits above Joybird on price, averaging around $3,000 to $5,000, but it’s a different kind of purchase. Every sofa is a fully custom investment piece built at the California facility to last nearly a decade, and the price reflects that, a solid kiln-dried frame, a build made to your exact space rather than the closest configuration on offer, and a warranty that backs up the frame for the long haul.
The price difference comes down to what you actually want: a starter sofa or an investment piece, and a modular sofa versus something designed specifically for your space.
If you’re planning to move again in a couple years or your needs might change, the lower entry point on a modular piece makes sense. If you’re settled and want to stop thinking about your sofa for the next decade, the higher price buys you exactly that. Neither approach is wrong, it just depends on what you need.
Final Thoughts: Which Sofa Brand Fits Your Needs
Joybird sofas are beautiful, and they have a real place for someone who wants a modular sofa they can reconfigure over time, likes the mid-century style, and wants a good sofa at a lower price point, knowing they may need to replace it around the five-year mark.
Both brands have retail locations if you’d rather see a sofa in person before buying: Joybird through showrooms and Partner Studios around the US, What A Room at its single showroom in San Jose, CA.
If you’re looking for more of an investment piece, one that can last longer and needs to be fully customizable for a smaller or odd-shaped space, What A Room might be your solution. It’s built for buyers who’ve already tried the modular route, or measured their space enough times to know a standard configuration just won’t fit right, and want a sofa built once, to spec, rather than assembled from the closest available option.
Both brands are great options, just for different reasons, different buyers, and different price points. Knowing where you fit within those options, whether you’re solving for flexibility and a lower price now or fit and longevity over the next decade, will help you decide which brand, and which sofa, is right for you.
