Ordering customized furniture is always a challenge. The great part is, you get to be the product designer. We’ve put together the Top 5 Tips you need to ensure success. When selecting furniture for a space, it is important to be as specific as possible at each and every step – even down to how fabric will be applied to the piece. It is also necessary to know where in the design plan the piece will be placed and be sure it will fit to scale. A good example is our Evok Sectional (shown left). Evok is a modular design with many units that can be put together in various ways. It is necessary to have the right dimensions in order for all the pieces to fit together. Take a look at our list of the Top 5 Tips to remember when ordering customized furniture.
TOP 5 TIPS WHEN ORDERING CUSTOM FURNITURE
1. Know your space’s dimensions. Make sure to work with floor plans or designer drawings so that you know the exact measurements of the space when customizing dimensions to furniture. Consider, for example, window heights so that when placing a sofa under a window, the height does not cover the view. Also, when increasing or reducing sofa or sectional lengths, consider seat and back cushion size configurations. It’s a good idea to add another cushion when stretching a frame while reducing may warrant fewer cushions. This will help maintain the aesthetic appeal of the furniture.
2. Consider how the piece will be delivered. Make sure the project you are working on has openings that are large enough to get the custom furniture in to the space. It would be awful to order a custom upholstered king bed only to realize it will not fit through the door. In this case, ask for a split platform. Or, if you need a 140″ wide sofa, you may need to order the sofa in two parts – a left arm sofa 70″ and a right arm sofa 70″ – to ensure ease of delivery. Or consider if it’s a modular design like the Evok Sectional (below), it’s easy to get into any space.
3. Send a drawing. Many designers like to add treatments to our designs. Therefore, if you want to add nail heads (as in the Elvis Swivel Chair pictured below) or change legs, or add diamond tufting, it is best to send an image depicting the desired trim and its placement on the piece. We get many requests to add nail heads, add Swarovski crystals or add diamond tufting. In this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words.
4. Choose the right fabric. There are so many things to consider when selecting a cover for your customized size furniture. When customizing, you have to consider how wide the fabric roll is and in what direction the fabric runs. This is important because there may need to be seams running where you did not envision. For example, if you want a non-railroaded stripe on a sofa and the stripe comes off a 54″ wide roll and the sofa is 96″ wide, there will be seams. We are masters at handling such things. However, it is best to consider how your fabric choice will work on the frame (as below with our Egoist).
5. Double check specifications. Be sure to double check your specifications and the factory’s confirmation of your order. As with all our customers, we consider ourselves partners in creating beautiful pieces of furniture, created one at a time when ordered. Therefore, it helps to make sure our specs match your specs before creating the custom sizes (Boxx ottoman in hair-on-hide below).
We hope these Top 5 Tips for ordering custom furniture will help you in your next venture. If you would like to create a pin board for a project you can visit our Nathan Anthony Pinterest page!