Your Ultimate Guide to Luxury Leather Furniture

Photos courtesy of Colorado Style Home Furnishings

Your home should reflect your design style and your lifestyle. Whether you prefer classic or on-trend, modern or traditional, opulence or minimalism—your furnishings must be comfortable and durable to withstand daily use. 

Thus leather furniture is the perfect choice for homeowners who value high-end, timeless design that is also cozy and inviting. Nothing adds richness and raw, natural beauty to a room like a gorgeous leather sofa or chair. 

This guide will show you how to select the most durable, comfortable and stylish leather furniture for your home.

Quality and Comfort

Leather is exceptionally durable, and gets softer and more supple over time. With proper care, a leather sofa can last for many years. When it comes to quality and comfort in leather furniture, it is important to consider the frame construction, filling material and type of leather.

Frame Construction

Excellent hardwood frame construction adds strength and stability to your furniture. The most well-known technique—the “eight-way hand-tied spring system”—provides individual seat suspension and lasting comfort. The quality of leather on the outside of your furniture is important, but the quality of the wood and spring system on the inside is what really sets luxury furniture apart. You should also pay attention to the depth and pitch of your sofa for superior comfort.

Filling Material

High quality internal components such as down cushions and layering of fine materials are part of what makes leather furniture so comfortable. A soft front edge not only adds comfort, but also lessens the compression of the seat foam—increasing its lifespan. Additionally, well-padded arms prevent the wood frame from being felt through the upholstery.

Types of Leather

Full grain and top grain leathers are the highest quality options. Full grain leather is more natural-looking, as it has not been altered during the manufacturing process by buffing, sanding or any other treatment—making it very durable. This leather enhances the natural beauty of the hide and develops a rich patina over time.

Pigmented leathers are also soft to the touch, but are given a top coat to ensure overall color coverage and consistency. This top coat also helps the leather resist fading and makes it easy to wipe clean. This leahter is also extremely durable and smooth, and tends to have a more uniform appearance (while still allowing its natural markings to show through).

High quality leather is renowned for its texture that continues to get better with use, while low quality leather generally has an artificial texture that doesn’t age well.

Style and Selection

Whether you are looking for a sofa, sectional, club chair or reclining chair, you can express your style with leather. The natural surface of leather has varying textures and unique characteristics. These distinctive features are unique to genuine leather, a natural product which has not been engineered—no two hides are exactly alike. 

Expert tailoring, tufting and deep cushions also add luxury and style. Additionally, there are a few specialty leather options you can consider when looking for leather furnishings, including embossed, hair-on-hide and suede. By adding specialty or contrasting leather accents, you can create a personalized, unique look for your furniture.

With all of these considerations in mind, you will be able to select leather furniture for your home with the highest quality, comfort and style. Combine timeless design elements with exciting contemporary touches to create one-of-a kind pieces that you’ll treasure for years to come. 

Brent Simon is an owner at Colorado Style Home Furnishings, a South Denver retail furniture showroom that offers over an acre of fine furnishings and accessories. View their profile or contact one of the Colorado Style Home Furnishings experts at 303-741-4240.

Content for this article provided by Colorado Style Home Furnishings.