Tufted Black Leather Sofa And Barrel Chair Set

Deep buttoning: what the price actually buys

Every button in a deep-tufted back has to be pulled through the foam to a fixed depth and tied off, and the diamonds between buttons have to be equal or the eye finds the error immediately. On a 2100 mm sofa back that is around sixty separate pulls. The labour is the cost, and it is also the reason a tufted piece cannot be re-covered cheaply: the cover is built onto the frame, not slipped over it.

What it buys is a back that holds its shape. Channel and button tufting compress the filling into fixed pockets, so the foam cannot migrate the way it does in a plain back that gets sat against from the same angle every night.

Leather gauge and the barrel chair curve

Barrel chairs need a hide that will stretch around a compound curve without wrinkling at the arm. Hides under 1.2 mm tend to show every fold; over 1.6 mm they resist the curve and the upholsterer has to force them. Around 1.4 mm is the working range, and it is why the chairs and the sofa use the same hide.

Contract vinyl is available for the same shapes and is the better choice if the room has a cleaning contract with chemical products, because leather will dry and crack under a strong alkaline cleaner.

Steel plinth rather than legs

Sixty millimetres of brushed stainless steel under a black leather body reads as a shadow line rather than as a base, so the seating looks like it sits on the floor. Structurally a full plinth spreads the load across the whole footprint, which matters for a 2100 mm sofa on a suspended timber floor.