The Goldilocks Quandary: Finding the Chair that is Just Right

Most of us are willing to sacrifice comfort for fashion; if wearing tight, pinching shoes means you’re going to look good, you’re willing to wear them. We do this in our interior decorating too.

Admit it: at some point in your life, you’ve considered protecting your couch in a plastic cover because you wanted the fabric to remain pristine. You may even have gone as far as calling the plastic covers “retro.” They’re not—plastic couch covers are a major interior design don’t. Then there is the chair you won’t let any of your family members sit on; it’s reserved for guests only.

You don’t have to forego the small incidentals in life to have the classy living room style you want. If you’re looking for the perfect functional chair to complete your living room ensemble, just follow this how-to guide!

The Inception of the Perfect Chair

There are hundreds of chair styles in interior design. Five of the most notable include:

• Model 3107, Designer: Arne Jacobsen
• Louis Ghost chair, Designer: Philippe Starck
• Eames Lounge chair, Designer(s): Charles and Ray Eames
• Omstak chair, Designer(s): OMK Associates
• Barcelona chair, Designer: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Furniture and product designers like Charles and Ray Eames, Arne Jacobsen and Mies van der Rohe made it their personal mission to design furniture pieces that were stylish, ergonomic, functional and timeless. In designing what they deemed the perfect chair, these designers paid a great amount of attention to the materials, form and balance of the chair. Using materials like plastic, steel, leather, fabric and wood with compression-molding technology, the affordable, luxury-quality chair was born.

Finding Your Perfect Chair

As a homeowner, you won’t want to have to replace your furniture every few years simply because it’s gone out of style. Replacing furniture with every new trend is costly and wasteful. This is why it’s important to get your aesthetic right the first time.

It’s helpful to start with looking at the architectural elements found in the living room of your home. Does your living room have ornately detailed crown molding and plush carpeting? Maybe your living room has whitened pine floors and an angled modern fire place. Do you think the same chair could be placed in these two living rooms? In an ideal world, yes, the same chair would work in both living spaces. In the real world however, that doesn’t work.

Like their dwellers, every living room has its own flair. The carpeting, shape and even the window treatments of your living space will all contribute to the look of the chair. And while the chair should reflect the overall aesthetic of your home, it should also be comfortable.

Fortunately with the wide selection of modern chairs available on the internet, we can get a good idea of what we like and don’t like as far as available styles. But style is just one element. It should also be comfortable, something you want to sit in every day.

Finding the Perfect Chair

There are three steps to take in selecting a chair, and are as follows:

1. Take a seat in the chair. Move around in it, lean back; test out how flexible the chair is. Does the chair move with your body, or is it stiff and rigid? If you can’t sit comfortably in the chair in the first five minutes, then it’s not a good chair for you.

2. Examine the materials the chair is made of. There are plenty of great chairs made out of recyclable materials, and while sustainability isn’t important to everyone, it’s comforting on a whole other level to know your prized chair was reborn from a past life.

3. Determine if you need armrests. Some of us like to prop up our elbows when we’re reading a book or looking through a magazine. If you don’t typically use armrests, then you probably won’t need it for your living room chair.

Who knew a chair was so important to the living space? Now go out there and find the chair that’s just right for you.