Safferstone

Today I want to dive into the details on sourcing upholstery within our projects. I’m very happy to mix high and low in a room. I’ll sometimes buy a cocktail table from a retail store. I’ll buy lamps. I’ll find something vintage, something weird, something that just works and doesn’t need to have a whole story behind it.

Upholstery is different for me.

When I’m specifying a sofa for a client, I tend to think of it as one of the anchor pieces in the room. You’re going to use it every day. It has to be comfortable. It has to hold up. It has to work with the scale of the room and the way your family actually lives. And because a sofa is already a significant purchase, I want to make sure we are putting that money into something worth paying for.

100% of the time, I specify custom upholstery for our clients instead of shopping retail.

I know the word custom can make people nervous. It sounds like code for “this is about to get pricey.” But one of the things I really want my clients to understand is that custom upholstery is not always more expensive than the higher end of big box retail. In some cases, it is very much in the same world price-wise, and you are getting a completely different level of construction, choice, craftsmanship, and longevity.

To me, that makes it a much better place to put the investment.

 

Custom upholstery is made in the USA 

This is a part of the process that I especially love.

Most of the upholstery manufacturers I work with are in the United States, and many of them are based in North Carolina. I’m a North Carolina native; obviously I have a personal connection to that, but it goes well beyond hometown pride.

Furniture manufacturing is a real industry there. There are towns and communities that have grown up around these companies, and there are incredibly skilled craftspeople who spend their careers learning how to build furniture well. These are people with homes and families, earning a living wage, constructing frames, tying springs, cutting and sewing fabric, matching patterns, upholstering by hand. It is work that takes skill, learned over years and passed along.

I think that’s special, and it is one of those things clients may never really think about because, when you’re looking at a finished sofa, you’re mostly thinking: Do I like this? Is it comfortable? Does the fabric work?

I am thinking about all of that too, obviously. But I am also thinking about who made it, how they made it, what is underneath the fabric, and whether I believe that piece is going to hold up in your house.

The inside matters as much as the outside

Two sofas can look pretty similar in a photograph and be constructed very differently.

With the manufacturers I use, I’m looking for things like kiln-dried hardwood frames and eight-way hand-tied springs. Those are not especially glamorous phrases, but they are part of what makes a good sofa durable and comfortable.

Eight-way hand-tied springs are exactly what they sound like: the springs inside the sofa are tied together by hand in multiple directions. It is a traditional upholstery technique that creates a comfortable sit, and it takes time and skill.

Years ago, I happened into an Arhaus store in the King Of Prussia mall. I asked a salesperson about a few of their sofa frames. At one point she mentioned that one particular sofa had eight-way hand-tied springs. I asked, “Wait, don’t they all?”

No. That was the only one.

I was stunned because that is something I expect from the manufacturers I use.

That experience stuck with me because it was such a good example of the difference between buying something because it looks expensive and buying something because it is actually made in a way that justifies the investment.

 

Custom does not mean “make everything weird”

The other thing I love about custom upholstery is that it gives us choices where the choices actually matter.

We can often adjust the width of a sofa (usually to the inch) so it fits the room properly. We can choose the cushion fill and number of seats based on how you like to sit. We can select from a huge range of fabrics and finishes. Depending on the manufacturer, we may have options around the arm, the back, the cushion style, the leg, the skirt, all of those little details that change the personality of the piece.

But I am not interested in customizing something just because we can.

If a sofa is 36 inches deep and you really want something 40 inches deep, I may decide we should look at another frame that was designed with those proportions rather than stretching the first one into something it was never supposed to be.

That is part of the value too. It is not just access to more options, rather, knowing which options are useful.

Comfort is much more personal than people think

One of the things we can often choose with custom upholstery is the cushion fill, and this matters because there is no universally comfortable sofa.

Some people want to sit upright. Some people want to curl their legs underneath them. Some people want to sink in so far they may never be heard from again.

I find that some of my older clients prefer a firmer cushion because it is easier to get in and out of, while families may want something deeper and softer where everybody can pile in. With custom upholstery, we can actually specify how those cushions are built — the density of the foam core, the amount of fiber or batting around it, whether we add feathers or down, even spring construction in certain cushions. Changing that ratio changes the whole sit: more supportive, more sink-in, more tailored, more relaxed. So we are not just picking “firm” or “soft” from a menu. We can personalize the cushion construction around a client’s body and the way they actually want to use the sofa.

One of the furniture showrooms I work with has what they jokingly call the Frankenstein sofa on their floor. Different seats have different depths and different fills so you can sit on them and compare.Technically, if he wanted a firmer cushion and she wanted a softer one, we could make that happen.(I have never actually had a client ask me to do that, but I enjoy knowing we could.)

That is really what custom means to me. We are not accepting somebody else’s idea of what the sofa should be. We can make thoughtful decisions around how you are actually going to use it.

 

And then there’s the fabric

This is where things get really fun.

The upholstery manufacturers I work with have enormous fabric libraries, including great performance options. If we are doing a large sectional, I may stay within the manufacturer’s own graded fabrics because a sectional can take a tremendous amount of yardage. This is one way to keep the price reasonable, but we’re not limited to those options.

If I find some crazy botanical,a beautiful stripe, or an incredible texture from another textile brand and it is exactly what the room needs, we can send that fabric to the manufacturer and have them upholster the piece in it.

This is called COM – Customer’s Own Material.

We send the manufacturer the information about the fabric, they calculate exactly how much yardage we need based on things like width and pattern repeat, and then we get the fabric to them so they can make the piece.

I love this because now we are really designing something for the room instead of selecting something that happens to come in six colors.

And this is another place where you see the craftsmanship. With a patterned fabric, a good upholsterer is going to match that pattern across the cushion, the deck, the apron, the skirt, wherever it needs to line up, so it flows across the piece.

It is the same basic idea as meticulously lining up a pattern on holiday wrapping paper,except now you are wrapping a three-dimensional piece of furniture in itThat takes skill.

It is also one of those details most people will never consciously point out. You are probably not going to walk into someone’s living room and say, “Wow, excellent pattern matching on that apron.”

You are just going to think the sofa is upholstered meticulously.

The numbers can be surprisingly similar

All of this sounds expensive.

Sometimes it is. You can spend an enormous amount of money on custom furniture if that is what the project calls for.

But that is not the whole story.

You can also get a very well-made custom sofa in the same general investment range as some of the higher-end sofas people are already shopping for at national retailers. Sectionals get more expensive because they are larger and you are effectively buying multiple upholstered pieces, but again, clients can spend very serious money at retail for these, too.

That is the comparison I really want people to make: Not ‘custom versus cheap’ sofa, but ‘Custom versus the sofa you were already considering spending real money on.’

If we are already talking about a substantial investment, I would rather put that money into a kiln-dried hardwood frame, eight-way hand-tied springs, a fill chosen for the way you sit, dimensions that actually work in the room, a fabric we love, and skilled American craftsmanship. Those are simply not things you are going to find together in most big-box upholstery, even at the higher end of the price range.

To me, that is a much more interesting use of the budget.

 

I want the furniture to have a life

I had a sofa in my own house for something like seventeen years.

It was made by a boutique NC upholstery manufacturer, and eventually I grew out of it. The fabric was past its prime. My taste for the back style and leg had changed. It had lived a very full life, and I was ready to let it go.

My husband was horrified because he loved that sofa. And structurally, there was really nothing wrong with it. It was still a good piece of furniture. (It still has life in it, just, not in my house anymore.)

That is the kind of lifespan I want to be thinking about when I’m buying upholstery for a client. It does not mean the fabric is going to look perfect forever. It won’t. Cushions soften. Fabric wears. Kids and pets take a toll.

But if the bones are good, you have options.

You can reupholster a great chair instead of throwing it away. You can put a completely different fabric on a sofa you still love. You can keep something because the shape is beautiful and the piece is worth saving.

I like that. It feels better from a investment standpoint, and it feels better from a sustainability standpoint, too.

 

So when I steer you away from the obvious retail option…

I am not trying to make the process more complicated. And I am definitely not trying to make it more expensive for the sake of saying something is custom. I am doing it because I know what is available beyond the big box showroom, and I know what your money can buy there.

I know manufacturers making beautiful furniture in North Carolina. I know which construction details I want to see. I know when it is worth changing the dimensions and when it is better to find another frame. I know how different cushion fills are going to feel. I know where to find fabric beyond the manufacturer’s standard library. And I know that if we are already investing in an important piece of furniture, we can often make that investment work much harder for you.

That is why I make the choices I do.

I want the sofa to be beautiful, obviously. But I also want it to be well made, comfortable, personal to your home, and worth what you paid for it. (And if we can do all of that while supporting skilled American furniture makers who are still doing this work incredibly well,  sustainably, and beautifully – even better.)

If you are already going to spend $8,000, $12,000, $15,000 — whatever that investment is — we look at what you can actually get for it.

Maybe that’s a sofa made in North Carolina by people who really know how to make upholstery. Maybe we change the width so it fits the room perfectly. Maybe we choose the cushion fill based on how you actually sit. Maybe we find a fabric that makes the entire room. Maybe it means you end up with something unique nobody else has.

That is the opportunity I don’t want clients to miss because they assumed the only next step after a starter sofa was walking into a big box retailer, no matter how established the brand. There is a whole other world of furniture out there. Most people just do not have a reason to know about it until somebody shows it to them.

That’s my job, and it is one of my favorite parts.

 

If custom upholstery has you curious, let’s talk. Whether you’re furnishing one room or rethinking the whole house, I’d love to help you find pieces that are beautifully made, deeply comfortable, and completely suited to the way you live.