The best investment you can make for your new Home

The best investment you can make for your new home, whether you rent or own your home, is to furnish it with furniture that suits your lifestyle. This makes your home far more pleasant to live in. If ever you want to buy Modern Furniture to be placed in your home, you would definitely want to get the best furniture that you can reasonably afford considering your level of disposable income and your current lifestyle. After all, you want to impress your guests by making your home unique and inviting. There is actually a lot of furniture that we want to place inside our home; the key is furnishing your home with furniture which will last longer than your wardrobe or your car, i.e. be careful not to buy furniture on impulse that you will end up replacing after a few years. 

When it comes to choosing specific furniture, there are numerous styles, designs, materials and price points that you can choose from. At the low end of the spectrum are big DIY chain stores such as IKEA with popular items such as the classic Billy bookcase; and at the opposite end of the spectrum are designer chains such as Design Within Reach with its midcentury modern $7500 Eames Chair. There is something out there that will surely suit your own preference. Although some can be quite expensive, you can also find something that would fit your budget. 

Local stores such as Crate and Barrel or Design Within Reach are obviously a place where you can search for items with high quality. For more unique and hard to find furniture, more consumers are looking online to find the best deals. The reasons are varied but first and foremost are the simple convenience of purchasing online. Discount luxury sites such as Eternity Modern or Inmod are a good place to start your search.

What to look for when buying reproduction furniture?

If you're in the market for reproduction furniture, you are joining millions of consumers who have in the past ten years "rediscovered" midcentury designs, and have led a surge in interest in all things midcentury from accessories to furniture.

 As a result, popular furniture pieces such as the Barcelona chair and Eames lounge chair have become household names, along with the designers themselves. Appearances in movies and pop culture have served to solidify midcentury furniture pieces as "must have" items in everyone's home whether it's just a small piece such as a clock or an entire furniture collection. What should a buyer look for when shopping for quality midcentury reproduction furniture? The key considerations for a quality midcentury piece are craftsmanship, materials, and authenticity. Of-course once these criteria are met, then the final criteria would be pricing. Let's elaborate on each of these criteria, and review important details:

Craftsmanship: with the flood of discounted furniture from China and other countries, it is important to look for tell-tale signs of shortcuts made in the manufacturing process or to put it less politely, poor craftsmanship. In regards to furniture items, examples may be poor stitching in upholstery, scratches on wood or metal surfaces, overall unevenness, loose parts, etc. There are many examples of high quality mass-market consumer items being manufactured in China. Likewise, there are also many high quality furniture manufacturers in China who are paying careful attention to these finer details in craftsmanship. Considering that people are buying midcentury modern furniture to last a generation or even a lifetime, these finer details in craftsmanship cannot be overlooked.

Materials: there are various grades of materials used in midcentury modern furniture, mainly concerning the upholstered sections of furniture. Examples of lower-grade materials are polyurethane (PU) or bonded leather which are actually not very common in midcentury pieces but may be used by some big box retailers such as Wal-Mart or IKEA. Higher-grade materials are top-grain leather and aniline leather. Top-grain leather is more common in the furniture industry as it is more durable and widely available. Aniline leather tends to have a smooth finish (no top-grain) and generally feels softer. Aniline leather will usually add around 5-10% to the overall cost depending on the amount of leather used in each furniture piece. This does not mean that aniline leather is always more costly than top-grain leather.