How Can You Tell if a Dining Chair is of Good Quality?
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Selecting beautifully made décor items for your living spaces is of prime importance if you want them to endure for years to come. And as a high-end furniture and interior design company, our team is often asked: How can you tell if a dining chair is of good quality?
The perfect choice will give you both comfort, functionality and longevity, ensuring that you and your guests feel at ease at the dinner table, no matter how long you spend there.
Judging the workmanship of a dining chair can be a bit tricky if you don’t know what you’re looking for, so our experts have put together these top tips to help you along.
Hunting down the right dining chair requires the perfect balance between style and structure, so ensuring that it has been properly made is a main factor. Here are 3 things to look out for.
A dining chair is certainly put through its paces over its lifetime and must endure lots of wear and tear. They have moved around, rocked on (if you have kids) and must bear the weight of anyone who sits on them for extended periods of time.
Ensuring that they’re both sturdy and well-made is your number one concern, so test them out properly before you commit to an investment.
The easiest way of doing this is to give them a jiggle. If the frame and legs don’t shift or sway under pressure, they should be robust enough to withstand heavy use.
You'll also want dependable lumbar support, preferably slightly reclined to accommodate the natural curvature of your spine. Ask about the ergonomics of each design before you make a final decision.
Most high-end manufacturers are very conscious of this, and some chairs even come with a tilting mechanism for optimal comfort. The Agatha Flex range from Cattelan Italia is one of our favourite examples.
Remember that dining chairs are subjected to being constantly pulled out and shifted back, so they should be light enough for you to lift.
The seat is the most important aspect of a dining chair, giving you ample padding and support for a night of convivial dining.
A poor-quality item will have a low foam density, which is guaranteed to flatten out over time, robbing you of a cosy perch. In general, dining chairs should be fitted with between 5- and 8 cm of top-notch, high-density cushioning for long-term comfort
Look for a sturdy seat with a gently curved base that tilts towards the back. This type of design encourages good posture and makes it easier to get out of your chair at the end of the meal.
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Finding a dining chair that will allow you to sit for hours without any discomfort comes down to its height and width. Find one that will easily accommodate people of various sizes. Ideally, it should be no narrower than 40 cm and about 45 – 50 cm high.
Make sure to test out the armrests, if they have any, to make sure that they are well positioned.
Here are some great reasons why you should match your dining chairs with your table.
Not only will a beautifully upholstered dining chair provide comfort, but it also improves the overall appearance of your living area. However, as they are constantly prone to spills and stains, choosing the right material is crucial.
Here are 5 options and their pros and cons:
Leather upholstery is luxurious, refined and elegant, making it a top choice.
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This is a synthetic material that resembles the appearance of genuine leather
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Cons:
Velvet is lavish, and beautiful and is made from nylon, cotton and silk.
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Cons:
Cotton and linen are commonly used for dining chair upholstery.
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Polyester and viscose are two of the most widely used synthetic fabrics for dining chairs.
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Our top designers work with all the best brands to ensure that you have the options you need to find the perfect, high-quality dining chair.
Find out more by calling us today or pop into our showroom for a chat and a cuppa.
For inspiration, read our article on mid-century-inspired modern dining rooms, or browse through our design projects to get some décor ideas.
Lately, I’ve been doing some digging around the web and have noticed one question that has come up time and time again. That question is: How can you tell if its a quality piece of furniture?
People can’t seem to tell the difference from the good to the crap. It’s a problem when the cheap imitation stuff looks and feels like a quality piece but over time proves that to be wrong. Here is a few things on how you can weed out the bad from the good.
The quickest and easiest way to tell the difference is how it is made. Most modern furniture is assembled using veneer. Veneer wood is a flimsy material only being 3 mm (1/8 inch) thick. Veneer is obtained either by “peeling” the trunk of a tree or by slicing large rectangular blocks of wood known as flitches. The appearance of the grain and figure in wood comes from slicing through the growth rings of a tree and depends upon the angle at which the wood is sliced.
Most quality pieces, at least wooden pieces, are 1 inch thick. This makes the piece much more durable. You want your furniture to be a solid piece. If it flimsy and created from cheaper material, you’re going to get exactly what you’ve paid for.
On wooden furniture, a good place to tell the quality of construction would be the joints. Good quality furniture will have joints that are screwed, or doweled. The very best joints are dovetailed, mortise-and tenon. Re-enforcing block attached at an angle should be used on corners. Indications of poor quality would be joints that are nailed, stapled, or will have visible glue.
The problems of having the furniture assembled by means of being nailed or stapled is that it can easily come apart. Staples will come apart over time do to extensive use.
Quality pieces will be leveled with the floor. Poor pieces of furniture will wobble on any floor. Your solid hardwood furniture will for the most part always be leveled with the floor. They are very stable and the only way to get them to shake is if it was in an earthquake. If the piece does wobble, this is usually a tell-tale sign that the floor is not leveled. This is actually the case with our showroom.
This one is important especially when it comes to tables. Wood on a good quality furniture piece should be reasonably scratch resistant, if it dents easily the furniture will not stand up to much use. To test this, you can try drawing a line on an unexposed area with your fingernail to see if it leaves a visible dent.
On our furniture for example, we use a standard catalyzed varnish. The finish gives you the freedom not needing to baby your furniture. You’re able to place a sweaty place of water on it and not worry about water marks or even place a boiling pot of water on it and let it go to room temperature.
It can be more difficult to tell quality upholstered furniture, because its frame is often concealed by fabric. Here is what you can do though, when you go to a retail location the sales person should be able to tell you all the information about the product right away. If they can not easily provide this information, or they hesitate do not buy from them, move on to another location. The sales person should have good product knowledge. They should be able to provide some sort of information to you regarding the piece.
Find out what the density of the foam is. Upholstered furniture should have a seat foam density rating of at least 1.8 pounds or higher. If the chair or sofa has removable seat cushions, unzip them and take a look inside. The foam block should be wrapped in fiber. Very high end ones will probably have a protective inner cover. Removable back cushions could be made of foam, but will probably be loose fill. Loose fill cushions should have multiple internal compartments. These internal compartments stop the fill from settling.
Look at the underside of the piece. Does it look like the same wood to you as on top? If not, then most probably it is veneered. In solid wood pieces, the wood will look the same in both visible and hidden parts (or almost the same as the better part of a board is usually turned out). The underside will most likely be some type of plywood or veneered wood.
Furniture made completely from solid wood is more expensive than furniture made from a combination of veneers and solid wood. This stands to reason since more high-quality lumber is needed. Veneer crafted furniture loses it’s value over time dramatically as it won’t stand the test of time compared to solid hardwoods. Solid hardwood retains its value much longer since it is built to last for generations.
There is a belief that solid wood furniture is generally heavier than particle board or MDF (medium density fiberboard) furniture. Yes and no. First of all there are a lot of types of wood which are light in weight such as pine or cherry. Besides, the more glue there is in an MDF or particle board piece the heavier it is. So such furniture can be quite weighty.
But there is a twist! For casegoods, heavier does NOT mean it is better quality. Beginning in the 1980′s and especially since the early 2000′s, there has been an explosion of cheap mass-produced furniture made from MDF (medium density fiberboard) covered with a wood veneer. MDF is heavier than wood – even hardwoods. So all those modern casegoods that weigh a ton? Yep, you guessed it. It’s a pretty good clue that they are made from MDF, not wood. Because MDF is easier to damage, it just won’t last like real wood does.
Chair backs, table skirts, arms, legs and other curved furniture parts are tell-tale signs of quality. If a part is a single piece of solid wood that has been steam bent, it will last longer and look more graceful than pieces fashioned from thin strips of laminated wood. Check for bulges or wrinkles along the inside corner of a bend, as this indicates that the internal fibers of the wood have buckled during the bending process. Cracks along the outer edge indicate that wood fibers have been stretched which will also weaken the part.
This is a great way to tell if it manufactured or not. Since veneer wood is a combination of different woods, it is crafted to have a uniform look to it. Solid hardwoods are made from just that, a solid hardwood. Solid hardwood furniture pieces show the imperfection of the wood because it is a product of nature.
Veneer is a man-made, manufactured wood to remove those imperfections and give the furniture a unified look. Some like the imperfections of the wood and some don’t.
There are a lot of benefits of owning a real solid wood furniture. It gives you the confidence that you won’t have to replace your furniture for many years. And even if you decide to sell it the presence of solid wood in your items will give them a great selling power. Enjoy peace of mind with your solid wood furniture.
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