Need Help In Buying Your Living Room Furniture?

Need Help In Deciding How To Buy Living Room Furniture?

Buying living room furniture doesn’t have to be a stressful or painful activity. It actually can be a bit fun when you know how to distinguish the quality pieces from those destined for the dumpster. The following guide will hopefully demystify the inner workings and construction of furniture so you can focus on picking out the perfect color, print, and texture for your home.

Upholstered Furniture

Your furniture sets the mood, tone, and overall feel of your home just as your wardrobe conveys these same traits about you. Upholstered furniture is perhaps the most telling sign of these characteristics as the use of color, design, and texture come into play more here than with any other type of furniture. Pieces that generally fall into the ‘upholstered’ category include chairs, sofas, love seats, sectionals, and sofa beds. This guide is designed to make your decision less daunting by defining some technical terms and giving you some insight into what lies beneath the cloths and cushions.

Woven Fabric Covers

Woven fabric means simply that the fabric is woven by a machine that interlaces two yarns running at right angles to each other. The most widely used group of decorative upholstery sold in the United States consists of woven fabrics. These woven fabrics can be natural, such as linen and cotton, or man-made fibers like polyester and olefin. In most cases, fabrics are blends of various fibers like the popular cotton-polyester blend. The most popular types of weaves are as follows:

• Jacquard weaves are fabrics with differently colored yarns or fibers woven into highly decorative designs. These weaves are most often found in traditional furniture styles.

• Pile fabrics have loops or cut fibers standing up densely from the surface to form a three-dimensional texture. Depending on color and design, pile fabrics can be appropriate for traditional or contemporary furniture.

• Textured fabrics are woven from yarns that have been processed to give them more bulk, crimp, stretch, or otherwise altered. Chenille is an example of a very popular textured weave. Textured fabrics are often woven to resemble antique, homespun cloth.

• Plain-woven fabrics consist of one color with their character resulting from the type of yarn or fiber used. Depending on the texture, plain weaves can be used on formal or informal furniture and with a variety of styles.

• Printed fabrics are first woven and then printed with a decorative design. Chintz and polished cotton are examples of fabrics that are often used for prints, however textured fabrics with blends of nylon, rayon, cotton, and polyester fibers are also often printed.

Non-Woven Fabric Covers

Non-woven fabrics are produced by the bonding and or interlocking of fibers. These fabrics can be made by mechanical, chemical, thermal, or solvent means, or with an adhesive, or any combination of these. Examples of non-woven fabrics include:

• Vinyl, which may or may not be laminated to a fabric backing. Vinyls are preferred on furniture that is subject to hard usage. Also called Naugahyde®, vinyl is often thought of as a substitute for leather, and can be printed in a variety of patterns.

• Flocked fabrics are made by gluing pieces of cut fibers onto a flat woven cloth base. These fibers form a three-dimensional surface much like pile. Flocked velvet is an example of this kind of fabric.

• Knitted fabrics are made by inter-looping one or more sets of yarns. This is a relatively inexpensive way of manufacturing fabric.

• Suede-like fabrics, such as Ultrasuede® are often used in decorative upholstered furniture covers to give the look and feel of genuine suede, without using animal hides and usually at less cost.

Inner Construction

The frame is the single most important component in determining whether or not a piece of furniture is going to stand the test of time. You probably figured wood as being the most commonly used frame material, and this, of course, is true. But any old hunk of tree won’t due if you plan on passing this wonderful chair, sofa, love seat, or whatever on to your children or grandchildren (they’ll probably just put it in storage or sell it at a yard sale anyway).

Hardwoods, such as oak, alder, ash, beech and birch are what you’re looking for in a frame. These hardwoods have a tighter grain and allow for screws, pegs, and nails to be set securely. Also, the best-made frames use wood that has been kiln-dried. This process consists of heating the wood in an industrial oven to remove excess sap and moisture. The process also makes the wood resistant to absorbing any outside moisture. Moisture can cause warping and swelling, can lead to loose joints and fastenings, and in severe cases can cause mildew or rotting, other than that, it’s great.

The quality of the frame depends not only on the materials used, but how they’re joined and held together. To create a strong, rigid frame, a variety of woods and laminates can be used in joints and for blocking and doweling.

• Joints are places where one piece of the frame meets another. These points of intersection need to be secured and reinforced with blocks and dowels to allow the frame to hold up over time.

• Blocking refers to placing additional ‘blocks’ of wood behind or diagonal to joints and corners to help relieve the stress these areas encounter. Blocks also provide lateral support and create a larger area for screws and fasteners to set wood elements securely.

• Doweling is the process of drilling into both pieces of the joint and then placing a pin, or dowel into the hole, thus further connecting the two pieces and adding extra support.

A quality chair or sofa will employ some type of inner spring system, usually in the back as well as the seat area. These systems add comfort, as you might expect, but they also work to take some of the stress off the joints of the frame. Here are some of the spring systems being used:

• The coil or cone spring system uses eight-way, hand-tied double cone springs to provide extraordinary comfort and support. This technique involves fastening the cone springs tightly to the base and expertly tying their tops together with a strong cord. This is the only system that allows for side-to-side movement in addition to up and down movement. Hand-crafted quality comes at a price, though, and while this is widely considered the best spring system, it is also the most expensive.

• The sinuous wire spring is made in a continuous zigzag or “S” shape. These wires run parallel to each other and are fastened directly to the frame and to each other. Similar to this system is the formed wire spring, whereby the continuous wire is formed into rectangular bends and angles instead of the zigzag pattern.

• The grid suspension system is composed of a wire grid, sometimes covered with paper or plastic-coated wire, which has one side fastened directly to the frame. The other side is connected to the frame by helical springs.

• Some manufacturers use elastic webbing instead of wire springs. The strips of elastic usually intersect and weave together and are fastened directly to the frame. It is best to avoid furniture that uses this technique.

Cushions, Padding, and Fills

A good support system is nice and does make a difference in the overall strength and longevity of a chair or sofa, but comfort ultimately comes down to what fill material is used and how it is employed. Check out these common fills and techniques:

• The more expensive pieces probably feature cushions filled with down (waterfowl feathers). Our feathered friends provide a softness and comfort prized by many. While these cushions do require a little bit of maintenance (a good fluff every now and then), they also possess a durability and resilience one might not expect.

• Perhaps the most common cushion used in medium to expensive pieces consists of polyurethane foam wrapped with layers of polyester fiber and sewn into an inner cover. This cushion is then inserted into a decorative cover.

• Another cushion that you may encounter is a polyurethane core with polyester bonded or glued on each side. This cushion is inserted into the decorative cover without being sewn into an inner cover.

• Less expensive cushions may simply be blocks of polyurethane foam placed directly inside the cushion cover.

Case Goods and other Wood Furniture

The basic rule of thumb when purchasing wood furniture is pretty simple: the harder the better. Hardwoods such as oak, maple, walnut, mahogany, cherry, birch and teak make for better quality furniture that resists denting and scratching. These hardwoods also form tighter joints and keep hardware snug and in place for a longer period of time.

Joints

A telltale sign of quality furniture is what kind of joints are used to combine the different wood elements. Avoid furniture that uses simple butt joints, where two pieces of wood are glued or nailed edge to edge without overlapping. These joints will not stand the test of time, let alone the rigors of everyday use.

Look for these 5 basic joints when shopping for wood furniture:

• Dovetail or English dovetail joints are widely considered the mark of quality drawer construction. When done properly, this joint “locks” drawer fronts in place, preventing loosening through many years of use.

• Mortise-and-tenon joints are often used to join rails to side members in chests and dressers. This strong joint is also used to join key pieces of chair frames.

• Dowel joints are very common in furniture construction. This joint involves gluing a dowel or peg, usually made of hardwood, into a pre-drilled hole to connect two pieces of wood.

• Tongue-and-groove joints are often used to make a strong flat surface as well as to attach drawer fronts. When glued properly, these joints are very strong.

• Corner blocks are used to help hold together joints at the greatest point of strain. An example of this is where seat rails of chairs join the posts.

Engineered Wood
Technology has changed the construction of furniture greatly over the last 20-30 years. Wood furniture used to be easily defined.

If a piece of furniture was made of wood, there was no question it was solid wood or pieces of solid wood fashioned together to form a table or chair or chest of drawers. Today, solid wood furniture is becoming increasingly hard to find and can be very expensive. Veneers and engineered woods have become the material of choice for most furniture manufacturers, with terms like ‘medium density fiberboard’ and ‘hardboard’ replacing oak, maple, and birch.

Broadway Furniture

228 NE Broadway

Portland Oregon 97232

503 — 281 — 5555

“Your Doorway To Values”

We Are Locally Owned and Family Run For Over 70 Years!

Our store carries over 50,000 square feet of furniture and accessories on 5 floors.

If you don’t see it on our showroom floor, we can order it for you

source:http://searchwarp.com/swa140276.htm

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Tagged as: Buying Living Room Furniture, couches, furniture construction, living room fabrics