Where Will All Those Night Visitors Sleep?

There are so many options that holiday hosts need not feel floored, furniture experts say

BY DIANE GOLDSMITH
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

It's holiday time and all through the house, guests are camped out on sleeping bags and on the couch. Holiday travelers usually overlook the inconvenience of such arrangements: After all, it's a small price to pay to have loved ones around.

"Comfort is slightly less important than people who come willing to take what's here," said Philadelphia writer Peggy Anderson, who usually puts out-of-town guests in a bedroom with a sharply pitched ceiling on the top floor of her brick rowhouse.

"You wouldn't want to hang out in this room," said Anderson. "But when I have people here, we're out exploring a lot."

The spirit of making do pervades the sleep solutions hosts provide this time of the year. There's everything from the truly makeshift -- which can consist of throwing a quilt on a thick carpet -- to setting up an air mattress or cot, to buying a permanent piece of furniture that can offer temporary sleeping when it's not serving as seating in a spare room, den or home office.

Not surprisingly, sales start picking up in November on such items, retailers report. At the Original I. Goldberg's in Philadelphia, salesman Joseph Camizzi leads the way to camping equipment, where boxes of Sevylor air mattresses picture a family in jammies and robes near an air bed on a living-room floor.
"All you need is a pump," he said, noting that for about $50 total, a good pump and twin air bed can help you get visitors settled in comfortably.

What customers need to be clear about in choosing a piece is how long they want their guests to stay.

"If you don't want your mother-in-law to stay for long . . . ," said Andrea Herman, director of the Better Sleep Council, a mattress-industry affiliate. "OK. Let's be nice about it. But that's the principle of the whole thing."

Customers are generally more interested in how sofa beds sit than in how they sleep, said Susan Andrews, who reports on sleepers for the trade journal Furniture/Today.

Manufacturers have gone out of their way to make sofa cushions more comfortable, she said. But they also are trying to ease sleepers' nights by recessing the bars under the mattresses and by using better mattresses -- some as much as "6 inches thick with pillowtops."

One company -- Georgia-based SleepTec -- has even produced a sleeper with an air mattress that inflates to 11 inches over a wooden platform, not a bar.
Daybeds, which are twin mattresses with decorative paneling or railing plus bolster pillows, are another popular seating/sleeping option. Some come with a trundle unit.

"Teen-age girls love daybeds," said Lorber. "They can be feminine and pretty and give them extra sleeping space. Grandparents love them, too."
Then there are futons, the Japanese import embraced by the '60s counterculture. "As that generation matured and realized they didn't like to sleep on the floor anymore, frames developed and mattresses got thicker and more comfortable," said Steve Ray, president of the Futon Association International in California.
Fifteen years ago, futons were being used as big-city studio sleepers. "Then all of a sudden the suburban business took off," Ray said.

Now sporting smarter covers, they're showing up in family rooms and home offices. Some even boast mattresses that contain innersprings instead of the usual cotton-batting-and-foam combination.

For those seeking something different, a recent addition to the market is the inflatable faux suede seating from L. Powell Co., which folds out into furniture you can sleep on.

A Powell sofa is on display at Sofa Source in Clifton Heights, near Philadelphia, which mainly deals in sofa beds and the double-duty chair-and-a-half.

"Most of our customers want a more traditional couch," manager Steve Smith said of the Powell. "We sell it to college kids and to people who bring it out in an emergency."

Unanticipated changes in customers' lifestyles account for a good share of Smith's business. He gets the holiday-driven traffic but also sees customers facing everything from divorce to the need to accommodate an elderly parent who suddenly can't cope.

Where does this furniture go?

"People are taking their spare room and making it a TV room or an office. That's the room that gets the sleeper," he said, a factor that keeps the pieces from getting too big.

And what's his opinion on the Famous Bar question? Do you still feel it on sleepers now that it has been recessed?

"That's the third most commonly asked question I get after 'Will it fit into the space I've got?' and 'Do you have it in stock?'"

The bar is less annoying although still perceptible, Smith said.

"Any sleeper will sleep like a sleeper, not like a bed. If you need something to sleep on every night, it's not a good long-term solution."

Nancy Gold has always had a sofa that overnight guests could sleep on.

"The reason is I always had such a large family," said the owner of King's Collar Custom Shirtmakers in Philadelphia. "When the kids were growing up, it was never just my five kids. They always brought somebody to sleep over."

Nowadays, she keeps two sleepers -- a king and a queen -- in her one-bedroom apartment to accommodate her grown children and their families when they visit from out of town.

How does she manage?

"A lot of this only works with people you love a lot," she said. "I'm not going to ask a business colleague, 'Would you like to hang out and be part of five people sleeping over tonight?' But you could have nine people and it's a hoot -- instant party. You'd be passing people all night going back and forth to the bathroom."
So what does she look for when shopping sleepers?

"Are they wide enough to sleep on? That's my prime consideration. Many of them are too skinny."

Some people prefer to use futons. For artist Lee Wybranski, a futon he slept on in college a decade ago still serves when out-of-town company comes knocking at his apartment. That's where he recently posted a potter and his girlfriend, who were here for a week to exhibit at the Art Museum's craft show.
"I put them in the sunroom of my apartment," said Wybranski, who co-owns Group W Art Works in Philadelphia, a firm that executes fine-art commissions. The sunroom is not insulated, it's just glass-enclosed. "Consequently, it's very hot in summer and cold in winter.

"Unfortunately, I don't have much space elsewhere in the apartment," the artist explained, noting he gave his North Carolina visitors a space heater to warm the area.

Were they comfy on the twin?

"They said they slept like logs," he said. "Either they were being kind or they were so exhausted they could sleep on anything."

After a hectic Christmas last year in which he and his roommate put up seven guests for four days on the futon, sleeping bags and air mattresses, Wybranski looks forward to a lack of host duty this Christmas.

"I think I'll take a road trip," he said, "and be someone else's guest."

That's unlikely to happen to the Wilsons, who reside in Swarthmore, Pa.

Vera Wilson, the founder and president of Astral Artistic Services, a nonprofit group that arranges performing opportunities for outstanding classical musicians, and her husband, Murray, thrive on a steady stream of out-of-town and international visitors. Several of them are Astral artists, whom the Wilsons put up in their stone colonial to save the performers expense.

Finding space for them is no problem with a guest room that houses two twin beds, Vera's home office/TV room with its convertible couch, and an entire third floor that easily sleeps three more.

"We no sooner get the sheets washed than the next one comes and sleeps," said Vera, who, with her husband, has lived in England, Australia and Argentina.

So far things aren't firmed up yet for Christmas except that the couple's two grown sons will be over. "But things happen," Vera said, pausing to explain.
"I have extended an invitation to my nephew in Argentina. I don't know if he will take me up on it or not. We never know who will be where when. We've had relatives from Scotland, Sweden and England. Friends from Madagascar and from Paris. You name it. They've been here.

"Our network is vast."