What do you think when you look at your living room furniture? Does it add to the look of the room or detract from it? Is it comfortable to sit on? If not, then perhaps it’s time for a change. Changing your furniture can completely update the look and feel of a room without the work and trouble of painting. Choosing the right furniture can bring a new level of sophistication to your home. If your furniture is worn, stained, uncomfortable, out just outdated, it’s time for a change.
DIY or Buy?
The first thing to consider is what kind of furniture to either build yourself or buy. Leather furniture looks and feels luxurious. It also stands up to normal wear and tear better than cloth. When the inevitable happens and someone spills something on leather you just wipe it right off. If you have fabric furniture on the other hand, you’ll be running for a towel and looking up stain remover tips on Google, and who wants that hassle?
Whether you decide to go leather or fabric, the most important thing to consider is the company you will be buying from. You want a reputable company that has been in business for many years. If a company has been in business a long time, you can check their track record, and research customer testimonials — in short, you can be sure the company offers good value and a strong commitment to customer service — if they didn’t they wouldn’t be in operation, after all.
Measuring a Furniture Company on Ecological Awareness
Another thing to consider is whether the company is environmentally friendly or not. This might not seem like a big deal at first, but a company with an environmentally conscious mandate is looking out for something other than the bottom line. Some companies are going green by using soybean cushioning, mainly because polyfoam — the material they’ve been using since the nuclear arms race — is dangerous. A furniture provider that invests in this kind of material is putting the safety of your family before its own profits. Toronto’s The Chesterfield Shop is one such company, and they are dedicated to making the shift away from polyfoam because it is disastrous to the planet’s health as well as that of families. According to experts, “Polyfoam is so flammable (it’s called “solid gasoline” by fire experts), and it burns so hot and emits such toxic fumes while burning, that even the National Association of State Fire Marshals (NASFM) recommends that it be recognized as a Class 9 material (an unusual but clearly hazardous material) because they are concerned about the safety of firemen and other first responders. Polyfoam was introduced in 1957 and quickly replaced other filling materials like natural latex, horsehair, and cotton because it was cheaper. While other options cost about seven to eight dollars per cushion, polyfoam cost only two dollars per cushion.
Soybean Foam – A Clean Replacement for Polyfoam
It’s this kind of corporate cost-cutting that endangers your children and the men and women who battle fires for a living. Soybean foam, on the other hand, is an environmentally friendly replacement for polyfoam. At first, when Soybean foam was used, it made up ten percent of the foam concoction, but thanks to recent developments, soy foam makes up as much as fifty percent of the cushioning material used in certain furniture. According to experts, using soy-based foam in furniture instead of polyfoam results in a 61 percent reduction in non-renewable energy use and a 36 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Industry experts expect that within a few years soy-based cushioning will be 100% soy. Toronto’s Chesterfield Shop furniture store is already making this shift easier, as each piece of soy-based cushioning furniture that they buy increases the demand. This means that any company investing in this kind of green thinking is ahead of the curve, as is any customer who buys from them. If you live in Toronto, you’ve likely already made certain environmentally conscious shifts — cutting down on meat and dairy consumption, avoiding purchasing clothing made overseas, boycotting labour-endangering Apple products — and if you’d like to keep that positive momentum going, why not invest in eco-friendly soybean cushioning at a progressive furniture retailer like The Chesterfield Shop. You’ll be glad you did.
Next Up: The Eco-Friendly Benefits of Reclaimed Furniture Shopping
