The Right Living Room Recliner: How to Choose

When you want the deep relaxation of a living room recliner, choose from over 175 models in stock on a typical day at any of our Roberts Furniture & Mattress locations. The variety of recliners from simple rockers to power models with heat and/or massage may leave you with information overload. To help you best decide which living room recliner is right for your needs, today’s blog post gives you a few matters to consider.

Some Living Room Recliner Cost and Space Considerations

While everything at Roberts is a bargain every day, which our neighbors appreciate, living room recliners come in a wide spread of price points and features. Simple push-back recliners, which open just by leaning back, are just a couple hundred dollars; a good entry-level option but one that might be a bit less durable. Your classic rocker recliner, popping open at the turn of a lever, is a sound mid-range price option that delivers you top comfort thanks to recent refinements in lumbar support, steel coils, and high-density foam. A novel idea for those of you with “cozy” (cramped) spaces are wall-saver recliners. For these models you only need about 6 inches of space between the chair and the wall! Traditional living room recliners require about a foot to open properly. If you want to pull out all the stops, there are ultra-luxurious recliners with goodies such as mechanical massage and heat to relieve your pain from strain or injuries. These marvelous chairs can run you into the upper hundreds or beyond but if you’re a weekend athlete or have a crick in your back, they might well pay for themselves at least in relief. When you’re perusing your living room recliner options, make sure that there are no more than 5 inches between the open leg rest and the seat; ditto for the lever. This is especially important if there are young children or pets in your household. For durable upholstery, leather is king but easy-care microfiber and other man-made fabrics offer affordable plushness and easy care.

How to Test-Drive a Living Room Recliner In-Store

You won’t know if a living room recliner is for you until you really sit in it when it’s opened up! Take your time: at least 5 minutes. Like Goldilocks in the tale you’ll have to work your way through many living room recliners that are just too firm or soft for your frame until you alight on the one that’s juuuust right. Try to find the densest foam in the cushions while remaining comfortable: they should retain their shape even after you’ve sat on them for those 5 minutes.

Make living room recliner buying easy and affordable by coming to our Hampton, VA store or other Roberts locations.

A Look at Leather Furniture Pros and Cons for Your Home

When you see the variety of styles and textures of the leather furniture popular at Roberts, you might wonder if this time-honored tradition in upholstery is for you and your household. Below are some pros and cons to consider. Leather furniture might not be what you think. You may be pleasantly surprised. Or after some deliberation you might conclude fabric upholstery for your living room furniture is the better way to go.

Some Leather Furniture Advantages

You might be in love with that leather power recliner on the showroom floor. Here are a few reasons this upholstery choice isn’t a luxury but eminently practical. Leather has been a favorite material since pre-history because it WORKS. It LASTS. A leather chair will last up to FOUR TIMES longer than one clothed in imitation leather! Leather is actually relatively easy to maintain. With fabric sofas, you need to “strip them down” to give the upholstery a wash now and then. With your leather loveseat, just wipe the leather with mild soap and water, and apply leather conditioning cream regularly, say, every four months, to keep it from drying out. Like a favorite bomber jacket, your leather sofa can last longer than a lifetime if properly cared for. That’s right: your new leather furniture can become heirlooms. Worried about scratches? Don’t. With a bit of cream or polish, such blemishes come right out of this thick, tough upholstery. Spills likewise are no biggie. Wipe it off and you’re good to go. Ditto pet hair. And what’s even more appealing is leather doesn’t start to smell, unlike fabric.

A Few Leather Furniture Drawbacks

Okay, let’s talk price: leather furniture is a costlier initial outlay because you are buying superior quality. If you have young children or large pets, you don’t want them jumping on your new leather sectional while a sofa made of fabric cushions might be more tolerant of this (ab)use. If the room is subject to extremes in temperature, you might find the feel of leather furniture too cold in winter and hot in summer.

Whether your heart is set on supple, rich leather furniture or not, our Hampton, VA store and other Roberts locations are ready to serve you with high-end selection at the most competitive prices.

Design Inspiration: Bright Bedrooms

Spring’s ever-renewing saga always inspires. When the days lengthen and the flowers bloom, adding their varied scents to the breeze, open your bedroom windows to take it all in. But when you redo your bedroom furniture and other decor to celebrate this time of light and rebirth, you want subtlety. Not only do you want your master bedroom to emphasize the light. You need a bit of darkness, shadows, to keep things interesting rather than relentlessly bright. That’s where bedroom furniture and home accents from us make your spring bedroom makeover so much simpler.

Bright Walls, Dark Bed for Cool Contrast

A simple and relatively economical way to make your bedroom furniture and decor better reflect the warmer seasons is a bit of contrast. Try rendering your walls, window treatments, and bedroom accessory furniture such as mirrored dressers in brilliant white or a similar light hue. Once you’ve done that, consider a king or queen bed in a dark cherry or black finish. Interesting lives are full of shadows, or you can’t appreciate the light fully unless you have something to contrast it to. Some gray or blue accent pillows gracefully augment this effect.

Choose Accent Accessories to Magnify the Light

A simple designer’s trick to make the most of your bedroom’s natural light is to add an accent mirror prominently on a wall facing the windows, especially if those windows face east or west. If your bedroom lacks enough sunlight, time to go all-out with accent lamps and wall sconces for some electric assistant. Finally, some inspiring floral accent wall art can round out your spring theme.

For these and other bedroom furniture choices to liven your inner sanctuary for the sunnier months, our Winchester, VA store and other Roberts Furniture & Mattress locations are always ready to assist.

Spring Design Tips

Can you believe it? While we are still in the winter cold for a few more weeks, spring with all its renewal of life and its accompanying joy is right around the corner! Besides taking a page from Marie Kondo for spring cleaning as everyone seems to be doing these days (our souvenir collections DO “spark joy” so they’re staying at our house!), here are some design tips for your home furniture and accents to mark the change of season yet again.

Switch to Bright Colors

Obviously as the hours of daylight lengthen, you want to “let the sunshine in” to brighten your home decor. One way to accomplish this inexpensively is with some accent poufs, rugs, and wall art in your choice of brilliant warm colors such as yellows and even fuchsia or statement-making cool colors such as the green you start to see again as nature renews itself. Ditto changing your bedding to something upbeat, from traditionally feminine floral patterns to bold single colors.

Rotate Your Accent Decorations

Another fun thing to do with your home decor to mark the different times of year is to rotate displays. Now that the holidays have come and gone, your snow globe and sprig of holly can come down for the next several months. Try bringing out your cool vacation and beach souvenirs! To make this easy, you can have both more display space and storage with a fine accent cabinet.

Our Yorktown, VA store and other locations are here to help you get into the spring spirit!

Fun with Feng Shui for Peaceful Interior Design

The Chinese philosophy of arranging items in your home for good results is named feng shui, pronounced “fung shway.” According to this belief system, rules for object placement maximize cosmic energy, called chi. Whether you believe this premise or not, its results are loved by designers and homeowners around the world. So for this blog post we at Roberts Furniture & Mattress will apply this idea to some furniture in the Hampton Roads area to give you ideas to add some life to your decor.

The Feng Shui Living Room

According to feng shui, energy is masculine (yang) or feminine (yin). Living rooms use masculine energy because they are so active with new people and conversational buzz. To make the most of the yang circulating in this room, proper placement of your living room sofa is important. Have a wall behind it and place it strategically in the “command position” so that sitting on it you can see the door. However, do not have it directly facing the door. This can get tricky! Because you want to turn up the energy in your living room, it ought to be one of your home’s brighter rooms. Ideally this should be sunlight but artificial light will do in a pinch. Beware mirrors: even if they’re not broken they’re bad luck here! However, potted plants draw good chi into your living room. Finally, try to configure your living room furniture so that it has “four corners,” so arrange it in a square or rectangular fashion. According to feng shui, this attracts good people.

Successful Home Office Feng Shui

Everybody works in the hope of succeeding, and feng shui principles are here to help with arranging your home office furniture to do just that. First, pick decor that pumps you up, making you feel successful. Place your desk in the command position. Try not have it facing a wall! The south side of the room has fire as its feng shui element, which governs fame and reputation, so fan those flames with warm colors such as yellows. Cool colors are bad for your home office. The southeast corner should have a theme of abundance!

Feng shui promises gradual change as you apply it. For your home furniture and accents, stop by our Hampton, VA store or any of our other state locations.