Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 | Time: 9:32 AM | Comments: 0
In the last decade many bars, restaurants and pubs have sought to attract new clientele by moving away from the traditional dark wooden chairs and tables, thick carpets and decoratively wallpapered interior to a brighter more modern look with polished wooden floor, walls painted in plain lighter colours and leather sofas and leather dining chairs. An interior decked out in this way looks very inviting from the street and can be a very successful way to bring in more clients as they are attracted by the comfortable look of the leather sofas which also give a less dominantly masculine aspect than the traditional colonial style hard wooden seating. When choosing the style of leather sofas the owner should consider the clientele that they are trying to attract. A Leather sofa with low table is ideal for coffee or alcoholic drinks with a light meal, but for dining with several courses then leather dining chairs with regular height dining tables will give the customer more comfort. Of course many bars and restaurants will offer both styles of dining and so a combination of the two is ideal. Both leather sofas and leather dining chairs have been coming down in price over the last few years. With technological advances allowing the farmed leather skins to be split up to 3 times from the original hide, it has been possible to reduce the cost of the raw material considerably. Now many factories in China are producing high quality leathers and can make two or three cuts from one hide, with the top leather having the highest quality with a natural grain and the other cut or cuts being coated with a polyeurethane layer and then fed through a large roller that applies enough pressure to give a uniform thickness and at the same time applies a leather grain effect that is already etched onto the roller. In this way any grain can be produced artificially and the result is very convincing and really can only be differentiated from the top grain leather by the uniform look of the grain pattern. The leather with the polyeurethane coating is termed Bycast leather and has advantages and disadvantages from topgrain leather. The main advantage is that because it is coated it is very water and stain proof and easily cleaned. Good bycast leather has the feel and look of topgrain leather. The main disadvantage of bycast is that after extended wear the polyeurethane coating can be scuffed away leaving a matt leather below. This looks unsightly and can be difficult to repair economically. But the greatest benefit of bycast over topgrain is definitely the lower price which often sees a saving of up to sixty to seventy percent over the more expensive grades. This saving is often the deciding factor because many restaurateurs seek to change the interior furnishing regularly to keep a fresh look to their premises so a lifespan of three or four years for the leather sofas is quite acceptable. When choosing the leather sofas it is important to ensure that the Company selling them offer a good guarantee not only for the leather but for the sofa frame because these are invariably made of timber and if the construction is not designed to be strong then the sofa can fail very early in it's use and it is a very difficult process to strip and repair a broken sofa and will not be worthwhile. This consideration is even more important for leather dining chairs since in order to achieve an elegant look they must use thinner cuts of timber and therefore the chance of failure through use of unseasoned or split wood or through poor design is ever more real. To reduce prices and so increase their sales many manufacturers save money by using cheaper timbers or accepting lower grades of wood. European manufacturers of this type of chair generally use beechwood which is a hard and uniformly grained timber ideal for making this kind of furniture but for speed of production they will often downgrade the construction. Dowelled joints are among the strongest but often it is quicker to use mortice and tenon joints which are strong if accurately cut and glued with quality polyvinylacetate (PVA) glues but are doomed to failure if the joints are manufactured poorly. Many leather dining chairs are manufacture in the far east now in Malaysia and China and the timber used by these factories tend to be Birchwood, Oakwood or Rubberwood. In 2007 and 2008 the prices of these raw materials soared as demand rose sharply. Shipping costs rose dramatically too tempting some importers to buy these chair in semi assembled form (SKD) that either they or their customers would assemble in the UK. SKD chairs are all the more prone to failure if inferior timber selection is used since the SKD construction needs threaded inserts to be screwed into the front legs that then attach with bolts through the chair seat frame and if the timber is even slightly split through a fault in the wood then that leg will certainly break away sometime in it's use. Of course this kind of event can be a disaster for a bar or restaurant so it is best to steer clear of SKD leather dining chairs. In fact one (of the very few) beneficial aspects of the present economic downturn is that falling demand has led to shipping charges have fallen a lot from the end of 2008 giving less advantage to importers to bring in SKD chairs. Another important consideration is to check with the seller that the foam filling used complies with UK fire regulations and that the supplier can provide the necessary certification to satisfy the fire officer should they require it.
About the Author of Leather Sofa and Leather Dining Chairs