Good Chair

What makes a good chair? Hmmm theoretically, it should have 450-460mm seat height, a 30 degrees recline of the backrest, (the recline part is very important especially if the chair would be used as a dining/banquet chair, this is done in order to give the chair maximum support and balance to avoid the chair from tipping off and the person from falling down). The material of the chair should be solid wood (well, it depends on the design, but typically a chair SHOULD be made of solid, quarter cut wood). There are a lot of chairs in the market that are imported from Malaysia/Thailand that uses rubber wood, at first I thought these chairs were no good because the weight of these chairs were so light! But I researched on this wood specie and found out that rubber wood is also considered a hard wood and is of the same type as maple wood, these woods are said to be environmentally friendly as these wood materials are mainly from the trees in rubber plantations that have matured and were about to be discarded.

How to distinguish a good chair from a poorly constructed one? Just look under the chair, a good chair would have these qualities:
1) Four corner blocks on the 4 corners of the chair for ample support
2) Tongue and groove found on the 4 sides of the chair to support the corner blocks
3) 3 screws fastening the corner block into place

Most of the imported chairs from Thailand do have corner blocks and screw fastener, but no tongue and groove on the sides. Hmmm…Average price for average workmanship I guess?

Some things to consider when buying chairs: would you go all-solid wood? Or have an upholstered seat cushion? (ofcourse, having some upholstery would be more butt friendly but then you would have to deal with possible stains from spills) fabric or leather? Choices choices!

Wood Veneer?

A wood veneer is a 0.2mm thick piece of wood that is covered on top of a substrate (usually plywood, MDF or particle board) From a furniture manufacturer's point of view, these are really cost effective and make perfect sense (construction wise) as they do not have to worry about any wraping (wood movement) or cracking when they make the furniture. Most of the furnitures we have today are made this way, they use plywood/MDF for the table top and laminate them with wood veneer. This is how most of our furnitures are made today (e.g IKEA, Bo Concept, dimensione). There is nothing wrong with this as this method is more environmentaly friendly.

I've noticed that a lot of the furnitures out in the market today are made of paper veneer, these are very tricky things as they look much like natural veneer but on a closer look, they are basically paper with printed wood grains on them. These things are a rip-off as they don't provide much protection for the wood especially when it comes to moisture. These things are also prone to delamination (meaning these paper veneer "skins" have a tendency to peel)

How to distinguish real wood veneer from printed paper veneer? printed paper veneer has a very smooth surface and the printed wood grains and patters are not so clear as compared to real wood veneer which is quite dark.

About Sofas: Some tips in buying

About Sofas

Among all the other furniture, my favorite is the Sofa. Sofas are very versatile and can be placed in almost any room. A house will not be complete without one.

For furniture manufacturers, sofas are quite profitable product lines as they can scrimp on material costs and no one can even tell the difference on the end product. You’ll know if you’ve bought a good sofa or not only after having the furniture for more than one year, then you’ll start to notice that the seat height might be significantly shorter as compared before (a sign of low grade foam) or the seat cushion of the sofa might sag in the middle (caused by wearing away of the sofa support found underneath).

My advise to ordinary consumers is to buy sofas with “loose seat cushions” meaning the seat cushion of the sofa is removable and not fixed on the body of the sofa itself. The logic behind this is that it would be harder, in general, for furniture manufacturers to cheat on materials of loose-seat cushion sofas as they have to provide more foam in making these sofas. Another tip would be to remove the seat cushion of the sofa you want to buy and then test the “elasticity” of the seat portion by applying some force and push it downwards, you should be able to feel if the material used underneath the sofa is elastic or not, if it does not bounce back to its original form immediately, then don’t buy the sofa.

Sofas should have an average seat height of 450mm to 500mm, this is the ideal seat height for Asian people. Buying a sofa with an above average seat height would cause some discomfort to the person seating as it will cut-off some blood circulation on his legs. Buying anything lower than the average seat height would cause some discomfort as well because the seat height of sofas have a tendency to become lower by at least 30mm when constantly used.