Helpful Furniture Hints to Make Your Live Easier
Following is a short excerpt from a more detailed report on Furniture Facts. If you’d like to read the full report call 505-883-9999 or email lana@newportabq.com and ask for the FREE report titled “Common Furniture Buying Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.”
How can you tell the quality of a furniture piece in the store? This is where the rubber meets the road when purchasing anything. There are always questions in the back of your mind. “Am I paying too much?” “Is this a good deal?” “How do I know this is a quality piece of furniture?” The purpose of this section is to give you the basic knowledge required to either know what to look for or know what questions to ask. This section is specific to upholstered furniture.
Upholstery
Beauty and comfort are the criteria for selecting a sofa, loveseat or chair. Fabric plays a starring role in the beauty of upholstered furniture, but it’s the undercover story that makes the comfort difference. In most upholstered furniture, you’ll find three basic parts beneath the eye-catching cover. They are the frame, the supporting foundation and the cushioning or padding.
The Frame - Poised for Comfort
The frame and supporting foundation are critical to comfort because they are underpinnings for the other components. Traditionally the best frames have been made of kiln-dried hardwood which resists warping. The best furniture has frames made of maple, alder, oak or birch wood that are kiln-dried. Other substitutes are marine plywood and hardwood plywood. Good quality, heavy plywood can produce a well made, strong and reliable frame. Plywood can be notched, glued and screwed to make strong, interlocking features similar to solid wood frames. Also, plywood resists warping so don’t be totally turned off if you hear your frame isn’t all hardwood. What you don’t want to hear is MDF (medium density fiberboard) or particle board components to your frame. Now that’s another story.
Supporting Foundation - from Top to Bottom
Support can be provided by webbing, sling straps, slats or springs of various types. The design, size and amount of support or softness desired by the furniture designer will determine which type is used. Springs can be single coil, double cone coil or zigzag (sinuous S-type) and can be connected with twine, wire ties or clips. Eight-way hand-tied coil springing has been considered a mark of quality for decades. In this method each coil spring is placed in the seat by hand and a skilled craftsman ties the coil into place with twine and interlocks it with other coils using an intricate set of knots. Each coil is set so it responds to body weight with the proper degree of resiliency.
Coil springs add depth and comfort but require adequate space. There are many comfortable, sleek, slim styles using the S-type spring. It’s another example of how modern technology makes it possible to have good looking, comfortable, serviceable upholstered furniture at imminently affordable prices.
Cushions
Cushioning forms the next layer in the comfort story. Cushioning materials include cotton or polyester, polyurethane foam and, of course, down. Foam and polyester fiberfill wrap are much-used padding materials. These man-made materials are durable, resilient, mothproof and mildew and fungus resistant.
There are various grades of foam which lend themselves to various style applications. Foam can be used as a solid unit, wrapped with a softer polyester material or chopped and blown into new shapes for arms and backs that would otherwise be difficult to pad. High quality polyurethane foam ranges from 2.0 to 2.75 pound density in seats. Since every customer’s feel is different, companies offer a selection of different foam firmness for seat cushions. Good quality foam is expensive so you’ll see a marked difference in foam quality as you move from economy grade furniture to higher end pieces. There is a direct correlation between weight and quality for cushions. Heavier equals denser which equals better.
There are many combinations of cushion design to attain different “feels” while maintaining a quality product. You have to start with quality foam, perhaps a solid core or even “I beam” like construction where vertical members support the upper layer with air gaps in between. To soften the feel of denser foams, a Dacron wrap is often used. This layer also helps keep the fabric covers from migrating out of position during use. Another option is down wrap the polyurethane core to give a plush feel to the solid core. Bottom line, if you want a comfortable feel that won’t break down, don’t skimp on the cushions.
Fabric and Tailoring- The Cover Story
Express your taste in the colors, patterns and textures you choose for your upholstery fabrics. The choice is virtually unlimited. But lifestyle and budget should come into play.
Basically, there are two types of fabrics, naturals and synthetics. Nature’s own are cotton, linen, silk and wool. Among synthetics are acetate, acrylic, nylon and polypropylene. Rayon is a tweener made from naturally occurring cellulose but an artificially manufactured fiber. Often fabrics are a blend of natural and synthetics fibers combined to provide the best qualities of each, unmatched beauty and lasting durability.
Generally, fabrics with tighter weaves and durable fibers such as polypropylene or nylon, stand up better to the hard use of an active household. More glamorous fabrics such as satins, damasks and brocades are dramatic and exciting but should be reserved for seating where serviceability isn’t a primary concern.
Nature has given us leather, one of today’s most popular upholstery materials. It now comes in a rainbow of colors and a range of styles from timeless traditional to avant garde contemporary. New methods of tanning and manufacturing also have brought leather into an affordable range for many pocketbooks.
Eye the tailoring
Check to see if the seams are even and if the piping (the tube-shaped edging) line up.
For less expensive printed fabric sofas, the pattern should match from one piece to another well enough on the sides and the front. But if your sofa is more expensive, expect more. The fabric pattern should match in the back, on both sides and the front.
When you've found the ultimate in quality, the fabric pattern flows. Like wallpaper, it should wrap over the entire piece, including the back skirt. The pattern should start on one segment and continue on to the next.
Weight, sturdiness
Try lifting one end of the furniture and check its weight. Good quality upholstered furniture will feel sturdy and solid. It does not make any sound and does not wobble. You do not want your guest gingerly sitting at the edge of your couch, wondering if they will, finally, be the ones to bring it down anytime soon. It used to be true that a heavier piece indicated better quality but that isn’t necessarily true anymore. 25 years ago, the increase in weight was due to a hardwood frame (oak for example) vs. cheaper softwood like pine. Now we’ve got MDF and particleboard products in the mixes which are very heavy due to their high glue content and low porosity. So we’ve got to be a little savvier in our analysis.
The Ultimate test
Be seated. That’s the only way to tell if the sofa or chair you’re considering is the one for you. Be sure the height and angle of the back and depth of the seat are suited to your size. If others are to use the seating often, they should try it, too. This is especially important when selecting a recliner or "easy" chair. It must be a perfect fit for the person who uses it most. That’s another way of saying that the feel of comfort is an individual matter. As you shop, sit and bounce and test the degree of softness and resiliency. Choose the feel that pleases you and matches your needs. Most important, if the seat isn’t comfortable, don’t buy it. Your local retailer will help you find something with exactly the look you want, that’s comfortable for you and compatible with your budget.