Choosing the sofa at home is always a difficult and difficult choice. Furthermore, we are constantly bombarded by misleading advertisements, which boast of selling quality sofas at rock-bottom prices, with discounts of 50%+40%+30%, as if there were never an end.
The question we must ask ourselves is therefore: can a quality product really suffer these discounts? Or am I about to buy a sofa that is worth even less than what I pay for and will have to buy a new one in a couple of years?
Our goal is to teach you to recognize a quality sofa , to avoid running into easy rip-offs that will leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.
Today we will talk about how to recognize a quality sofa and in particular how to recognize quality padding . As you can imagine, the padding is fundamental in a sofa, since it is the part that will constitute the comfort of the seat , but it is also one of the parts most subject to wear.
Let's go straight to the point where you are in the store buying your sofa.
The first thing we recommend you do is... open the seat cushion , obviously when possible.
In fact, there are sofas in which the seat is nailed; in this case we advise you to open the seat of another sofa from the same company , which will represent an excellent evaluation term.
This should appear covered by a layer of fabric, generally very soft.
It can be made of dacron, or other synthetic or natural materials, but in short the internal cushion must be finished , with a layer that will give the first soft touch to the cushion. Furthermore, this layer will have an aesthetic function: it will in fact cover the inside of the polyurethane seat and will hide it when you decide to wash the covering.
The second step is to ask the seller (hoping that he is a professional and sincere retailer) how many different layers of polyurethane at different densities are in the seat cushions . A quality seat cushion will have two or three different types of polyurethane.
This is because different levels of density will better accompany the sitting phase and will impart different pressures on the different parts of the body in contact with the seat.
Same thing for the back cushions which will be internally very different from the seat cushions, because they will have to support a smaller weight and therefore will have to have a different composition.
The third step is to ask the seller if conventional polyurethane or HR polyurethane is used in the padding . Here too we must rely on the sincerity of the seller, because recognizing these two types of polyurethane without being in the sector is impossible. However, we recommend that you write it on any invoice (scripta manent, they said in Rome).
What is the difference between a conventional polyurethane and an HR one?
Those polyurethanes with low resilience are called conventional , which therefore have a low thrust and are generally collapsible. This last characteristic is given by the fact that the small cells that make up the polyurethane will be particularly fragile and will tend to break and collapse in a short time. This way you will end up with a completely flattened and unusable seat.
HR polyurethanes , where HR stands for High Resilience , have greater elasticity and better push. They are also much more durable, as they are not collapsible. It is therefore essential that the polyurethanes of the sofa you are purchasing are HR, unless you want to end up with a shapeless mass of foam within a year or two.
The last piece of advice we give you is not to be dazzled by small features used in advertisements to attract customers. Lately it's been very fashionable to advertise things like down duvets .
It's true that down is valuable and very comfortable, but if the polyurethane underneath isn't high quality, half a centimeter of down on the surface won't make any difference . So first look at the substance of the session, and then you can also focus on the details.
We hope that these tips can save you from purchasing a poor quality sofa. If you have further questions you can write to us at info@sofable.com
