What Size Sheets for Sofa Bed?

When you open your sofa bed to accommodate guests who will be staying over for any period of time, you want to make them feel as comfortable as possible. That means supplying them with sheets and blankets instead of having your guests sleep on a bare surface. These can add some much-needed warmth for a good night’s sleep and it helps keep the outer fabric cover on the cushions of your sofa bed clean and sanitary.

But while the best thread count for a set of sheets will always be up for debate, the proper size for use on a sofa bed is somewhat more obvious. Just take a look at your product dimensions to see the size of sofa bed you own and apply the correct size sheet accordingly. Right?

Actually, that all depends. Some sofa bed surfaces do not meet the exact standards of common bed sizes and the cushions that make up the sleeping surface may be thicker or thinner than a standard bed mattress.

So this can pose a challenge for sofa bed owners who may be at a loss as to why they can't quite fit the right sheet in place on their sofa bed product.

Using Regular Bed Sheets on a Sofa Bed

The first assumption most consumers make is that a bed is a bed, regardless of whether it's just been folded out from a sofa or it sits stationary in a traditional bed frame. Unfortunately, that doesn't always turn out to be true when it comes to using regular bed sheets on a sofa bed surface.

Consider the fitted sheet, for instance. Let's say you have a queen size bed in your bedroom and the sofa bed in your living room is a queen sofa bed. But when you open the sofa bed and slip that fitted sheet over the cushions of the sleeping surface, something is noticeably off. The sheet doesn't quite fit properly, it's loose and wrinkled. Anyone who sleeps on the fitted sheet of that sofa bed is inevitably going to wake up with the sheet having slipped loose during the night.

So why is that? It's a queen size fitted sheet. It stays snug on the queen bed mattress upstairs, but won't fit properly on the queen sofa bed downstairs when guests sleep over.

Sofa Bed Size Dimensions vs. Traditional Bed Size Dimensions

It can be a real hassle when you realize your fitted sheet doesn't fit your bed mattress and your sofa bed surface. The reason for this is due to the fact that a full size or queen size traditional bed is not the same as a full sofa bed or queen sofa bed. In most cases, a sofa bed is typically shorter than its traditional counterpart.

So that's why you'll notice the fitted sheet on your full or queen size sofa bed doesn't quite fit as tightly as it would normally on a traditional mattress. The fit is much looser and more likely to come off when guests are turning or rolling over in their sleep.

In fact, the only sheet size that is nearly identical in both sofa bed and traditional bed sizes is a twin. These two sizes are nearly exact, so your fitted sheet will fit properly and stay in place throughout the night.

Full sofa beds are roughly three inches shorter, queen sofa beds can be as much as six inches shorter than their traditional mattress counterparts. So if you plan to use regular bed sheets on a sofa bed, you can try to pin the fitted sheet for a tighter fit (or at least to keep it from slipping off).

You may wonder if going one size down (a full on a queen size sofa bed, a queen on a king size sofa bed) is a good alternative, but this isn't guaranteed to work how you expect as the shape of the sheets and the size difference could prove difficult to slip on completely.