Smitten by Tufted Furniture? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

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Tufted furniture is one of the hottest trends in the furniture industry today although it’s been around for a long time. Everybody is coveting to acquire one of those couches with tufted back or bed with a tufted headboard. To cater to this burgeoning demand, furniture manufacturers and designers have come up with interesting patterns in tufted furniture that capture the fancy of many savvy homeowners.

The popular fixation on tufted furniture can be easily attributed to various elements such as comfort and finishing. However, some just want to display tufted furniture as an accent piece in their living space.

But before you are swayed by the universal fascination for this latest furniture design, it pays to learn as much about the trend as you can, especially if you’re planning to invest in some.

So let’s enter the world of tufted furniture.

The Making of Tufted Furniture

In order to achieve the tufted appearance on the surface of furniture, layers of fabric, filling and paddings are stitched together by a strong thread which pulls and secures the layers the fabric or leather to create depressions or dimples on the surface. More often, the layers are secured by a knot, button or ribbon to give it a subtle effect. The process creates raised surfaces that are known as tufts.

Furniture manufacturers use tufting on a wide variety of furniture, most notably couches, chairs, ottomans, and headboards. Tufting can be done on furniture upholstered in fabric as well as leather. Although technically, tufting is known to be a traditional style found predominantly in classic furniture design schemes, it has been reinvented by designers to match the contemporary furniture pieces as well.

Shape, Style, and Structure of Tufts
As opposed to traditional tufting patterns, the modern designs are more versatile and can offer a wide variety of effects including elegant, flirty and masculine. Whether you choose a particular pattern over the other depends largely on the mood you want to create in your living space. This will guide the selection of fabric or leather, texture, shape, and color to create the specific tufted furniture you want. You should keep it in mind if you are going for customized tufted furniture for your home.

Why Tufted Styles are Employed
The popularity of tufting as a furniture design idea can also be attributed to the fact that it stands out and adds dimension to an otherwise plain surface. The tufted surface is a departure from the rest of the surface area in furniture which makes it eye-grabbing, to say the least. It offers creative patterns to the surface of the furniture with its high and low points. This is one of the reasons tufted furniture especially sofas and headboards look gorgeous when highlighted by overhead lightings. A furniture piece can have tufting all over its surface or just in parts. It really depends on what kind of design you want to achieve in the process of tufting.

Why Diamond Tufting is Popular

Tufting can be created in a variety of shapes and patterns. Diamond Tufting, also known as True Tufting or Biscuit Tufting, is one of the most popular tufting patterns in the modern furniture manufacturing industry today.

Diamond Tufting patterns typically have square-shaped depressions on the surface highlighted by deep pleats that are situated 6-8 inches apart from each other. The surface of furniture needs to have sufficient length in order to create this effect. Moreover, the furniture surface requires more fabric to create and hold deep tufts together.

If you’re custom ordering a couch or chair with Diamond Tufting, make sure you keep these points in mind.

Button-back Upholstery

Some furniture may have button-back upholstery – a design pattern that resembles the tufted upholstery scheme. Nevertheless, the two are very different when it comes to the process employed. Unlike true tufting, the process of creating button-back upholstery involves stitching only the top layers of padding of the surface with no visible depressions or pleats between the tufts.

Some people prefer button-back upholstery over true tufting because it retains the original design/pattern of the fabric. Button-back upholstery, when used with buttons in contrasting solid color, can help enhance the lines of the furniture.

Tufted furniture can be further accessorized by nail heads, decorative braids or welting based on a specific style of the furniture.

Shop our Modern Tufted Furniture Collection here.

Tufted Headboard

Headboards are among the many furniture pieces where tufting is being predominantly employed these days. So much so that even the platform beds can now be seen with fabric or leather tufted designs. Tall and tufted headboards add elegance to the overall appearance of a bed and become the focal point of a bedroom.

There is a huge range of fabrics and tufted headboard patterns available starting from silk to velvets to leather to natural looking fabric. But you should go with the one that complements your bedroom.

Although tufted headboards are elegant and enhance your bedroom, they are not free from disadvantages, particularly when it comes to maintenance. The crevices in the depressions can accumulate dust and therefore, require routine cleaning.

Some Tips before You Embrace Tufted Furniture

The tufting patterns in the modern day are quite different from traditional styles. For offering your tufted furniture a contemporary twist, go for contrasting buttons or welting.

Although tufted furniture looks modern and posh, keep in mind that it also comes with hard surfaces because of the tufting itself. If you’re looking to use a piece for everyday use, you might want to reconsider having tufted upholstery.
Sometimes a tufted back on chairs may not be suitable to everyone. In such a case, you should use a plain pillow for back support.