Where not to put a sofa
A balcony, an unheated dacha, a veranda are three places where a sofa will last many times less. We explain why.
Upholstered furniture is designed for a dry, heated room: humidity 40–70% and temperature from +2 to +40 °C. This is not a formality from the contract - these are conditions under which the materials behave differently.
What does moisture do?
A frame made of wood and plywood reacts to moisture by changing its size. At 70% and above, it gains moisture and swells, in dry heating it gives and dries up. Several such cycles weaken the adhesive joints, and the sofa begins to creak.
The fabric dries slowly in high humidity, and the filler inside is even slower. This is exactly the mechanism by which a smell appears on a sofa from an unheated house.
What does the cold do?
Below +2 °C, polyurethane foam hardens and recovers its shape less well. Regular frosts in an unheated room accelerate its aging several times - the sofa sags not in ten years, but in two or three seasons.
The decomposition mechanism in frost also works harder, and the grease thickens.
Three places where the sofa is out of place
- —Glazed balcony without heating — and cold, and changes in humidity, and direct sun
- —An unheated cottage in winter is the fastest way to lose the frame
- —Veranda or terrace - even under the roof, the humidity there is street humidity
And one place in the room itself
Close to the radiator. It is locally dry and hot, that is, the same drying cycle, only on one side of the sofa. Move back at least ten centimeters.
The second is direct sun through the window. It does not harm the frame, but burns the fabric unevenly, and after a year it is visible in the strip on the back.
If the room is seasonal
The easiest solution is to take the sofa to a heated part of the house for the winter. If that's not possible, any upholstered furniture there will be expendable, regardless of who made it.
