The Difference Between Good and Great Furniture
That’s why we want to keep you educated so you know what you’re purchasing and can walk away with great rather than good furniture. Here are some easy details to keep in mind when you’re furniture shopping.
The quality of the material being used.
This is one of the most straightforward places to start in knowing the quality of furniture. With upholstery, you can feel the difference between thin and scratchy materials rather than a heavy soft woven fabric. You can also feel it when sitting on a sofa, if it has a stiff cushion that allows no give compared to one that is a mix of down and a foam core that allows you to sit comfortably back into the sofa.
You can see this when it comes to wood pieces as well. They will have smooth and even finishes on the wood, and be a good tone of color to the stained wood. Be careful of running into yellow tone cheaper woods that are being used more frequently as the ‘natural wood’ color is on trend.
The Style & Detail
Great pieces are going to provide you with some beautiful visual interest. This can be everything from the hardware, to the detail of how the joints fit together. Even how they mix materials on a piece. Some of our personal favorites are mixed material pieces like a coffee table with an iron frame and stone inset top. To a leather accent chair that has buckle straps detailed on the back. You are not going to find this level of detail in pieces that are good and mass produced for a more generic product.
Size and Scale
This is a huge one we run into frequently! The size of furniture is so important. When you have a larger space to fill that means larger furniture, which means you’ll need to spend a bit more to get a great piece. While mainstream brands can easily be differentiated between by price point ( e.g. Restoration Hardware and West Elm) RH may be more pricey but their pieces are much larger scale than the pieces you’ll find at West Elm which are sized for apartment style living.
The Lifetime of The Piece
A rule of thumb we go by is the cheaper the piece, the less time it’s going to last. The same way that you may buy a t-shirt from H&M rather than Nordstrom, it’s likely that even with proper care, that H&M piece isn’t going to last as long as your Nordstrom top that has better materials and detail put into the making of it. Same goes for furniture. An Ikea piece is not going to wear well after everyday use.
When you spend more on a piece, they’ve put in the construction and material that made it that higher price point. Companies like this too, are confident in their craftsmanship and back it up with great warranties on their pieces.
Pro tip: There’s a good chance that similar furniture pieces are actually the same one.
You heard us right. The backend of the furniture industry is small, and the sectional you see in our storefront that looks and feels exactly like a “Cloud Sectional” from RH? It’s because it is the same one. Many mainstream furniture brands like RH and Pottery Barn source their furniture from the same manufacturers we do, and are able to mark up the piece significantly by just putting their logo on it.
That’s one of the reasons shopping with us gets you the quality you want for a price point that’s not overly expensive just paying for a name. We truly want each of our customers and clients to get pieces they love and they are going to have and use in their home happily for years to come.