Best and Most Comfortable Recliner Chairs for Sleeping in 2023

Our Pick: Windermere Burton Power Lift Recliner

Windermere Burton is a legendary company in the industry. A subsidiary of Mega Motion, which is owned by Pride Mobility, the company has a stellar pedigree and a longstanding reputation for building quality lift chairs. It comes as no surprise then that the company wound up producing the chair that would ultimately become our top pick in this category.

Chair Specifications

Before we get into the specific features this chair brings to the table, though, let’s begin by doing a quick review of the core stats that define the model:

The first thing that jumps out at us about these numbers is the seat depth. At a whopping 25”, this chair was clearly designed with taller people in mind. Shorter people who sit all the way back in the seat won’t be able to bend their legs properly over the side of the chair.

Having said that, the maximum supported weight is decent, but not high enough to make it a true big and tall chair.

Assuming the measurements are a good match, you’ll find a lot to like about this design. It’s attractively styled and looks as comfortable and inviting as it feels when you walk up to it and have a seat.

Comfort

The Windermere Burton utilizes a mix of block foam and poly fiberfill, combined with a comfort coil system for added support, making the cushioning of the chair a lot like the cushioning you find on most high-quality mattresses on the market today. Granted, the comfort isn’t next level, like you’d get if the chair utilized memory foam or other advanced comfort materials, but it is delightful.

Recline Function

Comfort, however, encompasses more than one dimension, and this chair has a lot to offer besides generous padding. For one thing, the chair offers unlimited recline angles, because you can simply use the controls to tweak the angle to your liking.

Some people like having the cone-touch convenience of presets, but honestly, it doesn’t take much just to hold the button down and get the chair where you want it, so we don’t see the absence of presets as being a huge deal.

Trendelenburg Seating Position

The chair also offers a Trendelenburg seating position, which reclines you to a position where you’re flat on your back with your feet elevated 15-30 degrees above your head. This is superb for people who suffer from poor circulation, as well as anyone who is recovering from a surgery of any type.

Personally, we would have preferred to see one or more Zero-G seating positions in place of Trendelenburg, but they offer similar benefits, so this serves as a decent substitute.

This model has two motors: one to drive the recline function and the other that drives the lift function. Both are powerful, quiet, and offer smooth action.

Storage and Extras

The Windermere Burton features a total of three storage pockets, all of them generously sized. That’s enough to give you plenty of room to store your favorite books, magazines, and other assorted supplies you might need while spending several hours in your new favorite chair.

Battery Backup

In addition to that, this model offers a simple, effective battery backup system, which is a lot more important than you might first think. Here’s why:

Most people who invest in a good lift chair do so because they struggle to get their feet back under them if they’ve been sitting for an extended period. The lift function provides the boost they need, and it’s all good.

Except of course, for when the lights go out. In that case, if you’re reclining when the power fails and you don’t have a chair with a battery backup, you’re stuck until somebody comes along and finds you to give you an assist.

The battery backup solves that. It gives you a greater degree of freedom and independence, allowing you to get up without assistance. Hopefully, you’ll never need it. The first time you do, though, it’ll become your favorite feature of the chair’s design.

USB Port

Finally, this model offers a handy USB charging port so you’ll be able to keep your favorite device fully charged while sitting in your chair. That gives you a whole world of entertainment options, at your fingertips.

Our Verdict

It’s loaded with extras, it’s delightfully comfortable, and it offers an advanced seating position with genuine therapeutic benefits. Those are all good things, but again, it’s worth mentioning that the seat depth marks this as a chair designed for taller people.

If you’re on the short side, it’s going to be difficult to sit properly in the chair, although even then, you’ll find sleeping in it to be a delight. This is a superb product, and we absolutely recommend it. A nearly perfect sleeper recliner.

Runner-Up: Serta Hampton

Our second-place chair is offered by another company with a long, proud history in the American furniture industry. Serta is best known for its world-class mattresses, but the company makes a whole range of furniture, including this impressive lift chair.

Given that the chair is designed for long-term sitting, napping, and sleeping through the night as an alternative to a bed, Serta’s mattress expertise is invaluable, and they put their experience to good use in this design. Before we get into the particulars, we’ll start with a review of the core stats that define the model.

Chair Specifications

As was the case with our first-place winner, this is a hefty piece of furniture, and it doesn’t incorporate Wall Hugger technology into its design, so if space is at a premium at your house, it might be a struggle to find a permanent home for this chair.

If the chair’s size is not an issue for you, and the other measurements are a good fit, you’ll find a lot to like here.

The Serta Hampton is a relatively unassuming design. It’s not unattractive, the design team simply put a greater emphasis of function over form, and given the dimensions above, it’s well-suited to users ranging in height from 5’4” to about 6’4”. That, combined with its weight range, makes it a good fit for the vast bulk of the market, although big and tall users will have to look elsewhere.

Although the chair isn’t flashy or showy, lurking beneath the upholstery, you’ll find a well-made piece of furniture. The frame is composed of hardwoods, and marine-grade plywood and the lift mechanism is solid steel. This chair was built to last. With proper care, it should provide you with years of reliable, mostly hassle-free service.

Recline Function

As a power recliner, the Hampton offers an infinite number of recline options, although you’ll have to tweak the settings to get the angle you want. There are no pre-set, pre-defined positions on offer. That’s not a deal-breaker, but if you’re looking for one-touch convenience, you won’t find it here.

Comfort

Aesthetics and production quality are all well and good, but the thing that most people who buy a lift chair are interested in is comfort. It probably won’t surprise anyone to know that given Serta’s experience in the mattress market, the Hampton delivers in style where comfort is concerned.

You won’t find any block foam here; the chair is padded with gel-infused memory foam, which makes it one of, if not the most comfortable recliner to sleep in on the market today.

There are two drawbacks to be aware of, however. First, unlike our top pick, this chair does not feature any advanced seating positions, so there’s no Zero-G or Trendelenburg seating option available. 

Second, one of the most persistent complaints about the Hampton is that although the motors are quiet, they’re also somewhat slower than the average. It’s not a huge deal, but it does take a little longer for this chair to recline to your preferred angle or to help you to your feet when you engage the lift function.

Assembly Required

Finally, be aware that the chair does not arrive at your doorstep fully assembled. It’s not difficult to put together, but if you suffer from some kind of a mobility issue, it may be a bit daunting.

The two best solutions here would be to either have a trusty assistant on standby the day the chair arrives or to pay a little extra for Serta’s White Glove service, which makes getting the chair ready for its first use an entirely hands-free process.

Storage and Extras

In addition to being delightfully comfortable, the Serta Hampton has three extras on offer: A generously sized storage pocket, a battery backup system, and a USB port. All of these enhance the value of the chair, and all three are great additions.

From a practical perspective, the battery backup is the most valuable, but ample storage room for supplies and a USB port for keeping your favorite device fully charged are super handy features that make the chair easier and more convenient to use, especially if you plan on spending several hours of each day sitting in it.

Our Verdict

The Serta Hampton is not just a recliner you can sleep in, it’s the most comfortable recliner in its class, and it only narrowly missed being our top pick. If you value comfort over advanced seating options and aesthetics, this is a superb choice.

Value Pick: Catnapper Burns Power Lift Recliner

Catnapper is another of the titans operating in the American furniture industry, and they’ve claimed the third-place position in our power lift roundup with their amazing Catnapper Burns Power Lift Recliner. Before we get into the specifics, we’ll start as we have previously, by reviewing the basic stats that define the model. 

Chair Specifications

As with the other models we’ve talked about so far, this is a big piece of furniture, so it may prove somewhat difficult to find a home for it if you live in a smaller house or apartment. Assuming that’s not an issue, this is a great choice for bigger, taller folks, with the highest amount of supported user weight in its class.

Aesthetics & Design

It’s not the most attractive chair in the world, but it’s certainly not ugly. Actually, its unobtrusive nature, combined with the fact that it’s available in a modest selection of colors makes it super easy to blend the chair in with your home’s existing décor scheme.

So far, the chairs we’ve talked about in this section have all had a little something extra — either a next-level comfort system or an advanced seating position on offer – something. The Catnapper Burns focuses on the basics, and every feature the chair offers is executed brilliantly. It does not, however, have a huge number of extras on offer. 

Recline Function

It has two powerful, quiet motors that offer smooth reclining and lift action, an infinite number of recline angles possible. It also lays flat, providing a good platform for a decent night’s sleep, helped along by the presence of comfort coils supporting block foam and poly fiberfill.

Extras

Where extras are concerned, it offers a battery backup system and a generous amount of built-in storage in the form of a pair of side pockets.

A couple of things you won’t find on this model though, are a USB charging port or any type of advanced seating position, making this a somewhat basic chair that doesn’t offer as many bells and whistles as some of the other models we’ve talked about in this section.

Our Verdict

The biggest single point of differentiation between this model and the others on our list of finalists is the fact that it supports slightly more user weight. If the weight limits of the other chairs on our list of finalists are problematic for you, this slight increase might be enough to push this one to the top of your personal list.

While it’s not best in class, this model is a case study of well-rounded excellence. It’s not the most exciting model on the market, but it’s a great all-around power lift chair, proudly made right here in the US of A. It won’t disappoint. A great sleeper recliner design.

Also Great

UltraComfort UC 546

UltraComfort isn’t as big or well-established as most of the others that made their way into our list of finalists, which speaks volumes about its quality. Since the brand doesn’t have the same heft as Serta, Catnapper, and the rest, they’ve got to work that much harder to make up the difference.

Their work paid off, as evidenced by their respectable fourth-place ranking in our review. This is an impressive, American-made piece of furniture that will serve you well. Before we take a closer look at what it brings to the table, let’s start with a stats review.

Chair Specifications

Like the other power sleeper recliners we’ve talked about so far, this is a hefty piece of furniture that will tend to dominate smaller rooms. 

Also, like the others we’ve highlighted, it doesn’t incorporate Wall Hugger technology into its design, so you’ll need to place it quite some distance from whatever wall you plan to place it near, which means that it will take up even more space in the room you choose to place it in.

It’s a reasonably attractive piece of furniture though and offered in a modest selection of colors (see our full review for the specifics), so you won’t have any particular difficulty getting the chair to blend seamlessly with your existing home décor scheme.

Despite its impressive size, this isn’t a great chair for bigger, taller folks. Not only is the weight limit too low to support that idea, the chair’s other dimensions mark it as being most appropriate for users ranging in height from about 5’3” to about 5’10”. If you’re much taller than that, one of the other models on our list of finalists will almost certainly be a better fit for you.

If you are especially interested in this model, however, note that the company offers this chair in a variety of size variants, so if this is the one you decide you’ve got to have, you can probably find it on the company’s website.

Eclipse Technology

One of the key features this chair offers is its proprietary “Eclipse Technology,” which, based on their description, is a seating position that gives you a feeling of weightlessness.

In practice, this is mostly the same thing as standard Zero-G seating, but with one important difference. Eclipse Technology provides the experience while keeping the chair in a constant, gentle rocking motion. It’s an interesting feature, but we’re not convinced that it’s different enough to warrant all the time and R&D dollars spent on its development, but your mileage may vary. If you love it, then you’ll love this chair!

Recline Options

The remote offers three preset seating positions, which align with the standard three reclining positions you find on manual recliners: Upright, TV Mode, and Full Recline. On top of that, the buttons on the remote allow you to veer from the presets and set your own recline angle precisely.

We love that both options are available. One-touch convenience is great, but paired with infinite recline angles is even better. The only thing this chair is missing is a memory function that would allow you to save your preferred settings.

Comfort

It’s also a delightfully comfortable chair, featuring a comfort system that mirrors those we’ve talked about previously: Block foam, supported by a system of comfort coils. UltraComfort does a great job on that front, and the chair makes a delightful platform for sitting, napping, and even sleeping through the night.

Extras

Unfortunately, the chair does come up a bit short where storage is concerned. The single pocket on offer is a bit undersized for our tastes, but the battery backup is well-designed and effective.

Of particular interest, the company offers a variant of this chair that offers both heat and massage functionality, which makes it unique among our list of finalists. Granted, the massage function is quite basic, relying on a network of stationary massage heads that render a simple vibration-style massage.

Still, some massage is better than none, and massage plus heat makes it even better! 

Assembly

Again, like the other top contenders we’ve talked about so far, the UltraComfort does not come assembled, but the assembly process is fairly simple, and if you’d rather not contend with it yourself, White Glove service is available.

Our Verdict

Bear in mind that if you’re not brand conscious and remove the Brand Reliability metric from consideration, this chair places second, and only narrowly loses to our overall top pick. That speaks volumes about the quality of the product UltraComfort has created here. In the world of power sleep recliners, this one’s a hidden gem. We recommend it.

Med Lift 5555

We didn’t feel this portion of our review would be complete without giving a shout-out to Med Lift for their impressive 5555.

Med Lift isn’t a big company. They don’t have the reach, reputation, and record of post-sales service and support that most of the other brands we’ve featured in this part of our roundup, but the 5555 is an awesome sleeper recliner and lift chair.

If none of the others we’ve mentioned to this point are what you’re looking for, this model is well worth consideration, and like all of the chairs that have made our list of finalists, this one has something special on offer that sets it apart from the rest of the pack.

Chair Specifications

Before we get into all that though, let’s run through the chair’s basic stats:

This is a strangely heavy chair, given that it only supports an average amount of user weight. On top of that, it’s a big piece of furniture, so the same thing we’ve said before about the struggle people with smaller homes or apartments have holds true here. 

Assembly

In addition to that, since this chair doesn’t come assembled, and given the weight, you may want to spend a little extra for White Glove service, so you don’t have to deal with the assembly process at all.

Upholstery

It’s a sharp-looking, comfortable chair, offered in both fabric and leather upholstery variants. Of the two, we recommend the fabric option over the leather variant for the reasons we mentioned early on in this roundup.

Plus, it’s worth mentioning that Med Lift uses bonded leather, rather than genuine grain leather for their upholstery.

In addition to suffering the same basic limitations of grain leather, bonded leather is weaker structurally, and less supple because it’s made of leather scraps that have been fused together. After about a year of heavy use, it’ll start showing its age by peeling and cracking. Not good.

Recline Function

The 5555 focuses on the basics and implements them well. What you’re getting when you buy one of these is an incredibly solid, well-made infinite position lift recliner that features powerful, quiet motors, and three preset seating positions on the remote just like we described with the UltraComfort chair.

Comfort

It’s not quite as comfortable as the other models we’ve discussed so far, but it certainly offers a good seating or sleeping experience. It just relies more heavily on conventional block foam than the other options we’ve talked about. That’s one of the tradeoffs where this model is concerned: It doesn’t cost quite as much as our top picks, but the comfort system isn’t advanced.

Storage and Extras

The Med Lift 5555 comes with covers for the armrests and headrest, a single, generously sized storage compartment and a simple but effective battery backup system. All of that’s pretty standard, but this is the area where Med Lift truly shines.

If you go to the company’s page on Amazon, you’ll find that the company makes a wide range of companion products that work together beautifully with their lift chair.

Our recommendation is to buy the chair and use it for a month or two before seriously considering adding extras. Then, once you’ve got a feel for how you’re using it, you’ll have a better sense of what kinds of extras would be the best fit for you.

Our Verdict

Even without the extras, this is a well-designed chair and an exceptional value for the money, but it’s sure to be the top pick for people who like to use products with a lot of natural synergy between them — a very good sleep chair recliner with a lot to offer the right owner.

Other Options to Consider

Flash Furniture Kids Recliner with Cup Holder

While this chair doesn’t fit neatly into the categories we defined at the start of this review, if you have a small child who, for whatever reason, is having difficulty sleeping in their bed and you’re looking for a good recliner that can serve as a napping chair, or even provide something that can be used to sleep through the night, it’s hard to beat the Flash Furniture Kids Recliner with Cup Holder.

It may be small, but it’s delightfully comfortable, and even better, it’s offered in an amazing array of fun colors and upholstery options, so you can almost certainly get it in your child’s favorite color.

While it doesn’t lay perfectly flat, it does recline far enough that your child can get a decent night’s sleep in it, and even better, it’s small size makes it easy to squeeze into whatever room your full-sized recliner occupies, which means you can sit next to your child and keep them company.

Chair Specifications

For your reference, here are the core stats that define this model:

As you can see, based on these numbers, this isn’t a chair you’ll be buying for long term use. Your child is destined to outgrow this model fairly quickly but, if you need something like this, you need it, and given the modest price Flash offers this model at, it’s a great investment indeed.

It relies on conventional block foam for padding, and there’s a generous amount of it, which makes it delightfully comfortable. On top of that, it comes with a cup holder built into one armrest, which should reduce the number of spills you have to clean up.

Best of all, it arrives at your door fully assembled, so all you have to do is unbox it, decide where you want it, and invite your little one to have a seat. When bedtime rolls around, just add a warm, comfy blanket, and you’re all set!

Dorel Living Padded Dual Massage Recliner

The last option we wanted to bring to your attention is a little off the beaten track, but it’s such an interesting chair with such an intriguing mix of capabilities that we couldn’t resist including it here. Before we start talking about the features this chair brings to the table though, let’s review the chair’s core statistics.

Chair Specifications

The first thing that jumps out at us when we look at these numbers is that it’s definitely a niche product. With a seat width that’s not as wide as many of the other products we’ve looked at and a modest amount of supported weight, this chair will simply be too small for many prospective buyers to use.

Assuming that’s not an issue for you, and you’re no taller than 6’, here’s what you have to look forward to if you decide to buy this model. 

The first thing to note about Dorel Living’s offering is that it’s a combination rocker and recliner, which would make it a great, low cost addition to most any home nursery. The recline function is manual, controlled by a simple lever on the side of the chair. 

It comes with the standard three positions you find on most manual recliners, allowing you to sit upright, recline partially, or recline fully. When fully reclined, the chair lays almost flat – not completely, but close enough that you’ll be able to sleep through the night in comfort.

The chair is generously padded, but given its modest price, it relies on block foam for comfort. You won’t find any memory foam, comfort coils, or other advanced comfort systems here. Even so, there’s enough block foam that it does provide a delightful seating, lounging or sleeping space.

It should be pointed out though, that this is a lightly constructed Chinese import. This isn’t the chair you want if you’re looking to buy something that will stand up to the rigors of heavy daily use for years on end.

At its price point, it’s the kind of chair you buy to provide a few years of service, and then you retire it and either replace it with something else or get rid of it and do something else with the space it once occupied.

So far, all of that sounds rather lackluster, but this chair has a surprise that may delight you. It offers a surprisingly robust vibration-style massage with lumbar heat!

Granted, there are limitations here, because the massage is rendered by way of a series of stationary massage heads which simply vibrate in place, but this model does offer you some ability to control and customize the massage.

There are heads in both the seat and the seatback, and switches on the side of the chair allow you to activate them independently. On top of that, the switch allows you two different intensity settings, low or high.

The heat function is tied to the massage function, so you can’t have one without the other, but that’s not at all uncommon.

Proper massage chairs are expensive, with the best ones often running as much as a decent used car. While this little chair can’t hold a candle to those kinds of chairs, it does provide real therapeutic benefit and is offered for a song.

If you’re in the market for a chair that can serve as a rocker, a napping or sleeping recliner and a basic massager, all in one delightfully low-cost package, this chair is hard to beat. Again, it’s certainly not for everyone, but for the right user, this chair is close to perfect!

Final Thoughts on the Best Recliners for Sleeping in 2023

So, what is the best recliner to sleep in? Ultimately, that depends on what you’re looking for. As we said at the start, when we began our search, we broke the sleeper recliner market into two segments: Chairs with lift functionality and chairs without that feature. After an exhaustive search, we declared a winner for each category, and we absolutely stand by our two top picks.

In our view, the best recliners for sleeping are the Catnapper Owens if you don’t need a lift chair, and the Windermere Burton power lift recliner if that functionality is of critical importance to you.

We do understand, however, that tastes and preferences will differ, and our top pick may not meet your needs as well as some of the other chairs that we compared our winners against. Here then, is a quick summary of why one of the other models in our roundup may be of greater interest to you:

In the Non-Lift Recliner Category:

In the Lift Recliner Category:

In addition to that, we also talked about two alternatives that didn’t neatly fit into our main categories:

At the end of the day then, the real question is which of these awesome sleeper recliners is the best fit for you?

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REFERENCES & RESOURCES:

• La-Z-Boy Niagara Rocker Recliner User Manual.
• Ashley Ludden Rocker and Recliner User Manual.
• Serta, Official Brand Website.
• La-Z-Boy, Official Brand Website.
• MED-LIFT, Official Brand Website.
• Flash Furniture, Official Brand Website.
• Ashley Homestore, Official Brand Website.
• UltraComfort America, Official Brand Website.
• Jackson Furniture Catnapper, Official Brand Website.
• 5 Reasons Why You Should Use Recliner Chair, Rrecliner Genie.
• The Benefits of Adding Rocker Recliner Chairs in Your Home, EzineArticles.