Criteria for Choosing Your Leather Sofa
Contents
– Leather sofa: comfort and resistance over time
– Criteria for choosing a leather sofa
– Leather sofa and maintenance
– Leather sofa price: from $300.
In addition to choosing the shape and size of your sofa, you will need to choose its material: leather or imitation leather sofa, fabric, microfibre or velvet sofa.
Leather sofa: comfort and durability
The leather sofa has many advantages.
Resistance:
– leather is a material that resists wear and tears over time;
– It is said to have a patina, and this gives your sofa even more character;
– The life of a leather sofa can be 10 years or more, depending on the quality and care.
Style and comfort:
– leather is a noble material that gives character to a room;
– Leather is comfortable because it is firm and has a warm appearance.
Criteria for choosing a leather sofa
Here are some essential things to consider when choosing your leather sofa.
The different types of leather
There are different types of leather for sofas, the main ones being
– Cowhide: this is the most common; it has a medium grain and is hard-wearing;
– calf leather: it has a light grain, it is soft and supple;
– buffalo leather: it has a solid grain and is very resistant.
Leather treatments
Upholstery leather has official designations depending on the treatment or quality. Sofa leather can be treated in different ways:
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THE DIFFERENT LEATHER TREATMENTS |
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|---|---|
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Full grain leather |
This leather has retained its original surface, called the grain: natural grain and wrinkles. |
|
Corrected or modified grain leather |
– The leather is sanded to remove imperfections and treated. |
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Leather rind |
It comes from splitting thick leather into two “sheets”, one containing the flower and the other made up of the flesh of the leather, which we will call “crust”. |
The thickness of sofa leather
Although it is mainly the origin and treatment that determines the strength of leather, there are different thicknesses. The thickness of the leather is between 1 and 4 mm.
For a leather sofa, the minimum thickness should be 1.1 mm. The thinner the leather, the more it will be tested by movement.
Depending on the origin of the leather, the thickness will be different:
– in general, cowhide leather is 1.5 mm;
– buffalo leather is between 2 and 4 mm.
The colouring of the leather can be superficial or in the mass. Colouring in the mass means that the leather has been dyed deeply and evenly; therefore, the colour is more resistant.
Sofa finishes and seat density
When choosing your leather sofa:
– pay attention to the finishes:
◦ seams, furniture lines, seat;
◦ in the non-visible part, I prefer springs to straps and an all-wood structure.
For the leather to resist, you must choose the sofa’s foam with care: a too soft foam would risk tearing your leather sofa.
This resistance to the seat should be at least 35 kg/m3.
Leather sofa and maintenance
Among the disadvantages of the leather sofa, maintenance is undoubtedly the most important. Leather must be maintained regularly with exceptional products, often a little more expensive than traditional products.
A leather sofa can become scratched if not appropriately maintained (fragile to scratches and cat scratches), in which case you can look for reupholstery services.
The choice of colours is increasingly varied, but it is still much more limited than the fabric sofa, which is infinitely variable in terms of colours. To avoid these inconveniences and to keep the visual assets of leather, one can opt for a couch in imitation leather, less fragile and much less expensive.
