Chair sizes accommodate ‘sturdier’ public

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This article was published 15/03/2010 (5773 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT can be a bit delicate to ask a furniture shopper: “Oh, sir, um, maybe, ah, you’d like to see something a bit, hmmm, sturdier?”

We are, as a people, as a sitting-in-chairs public, big. Bigger than we ought to be, health authorities frequently tell us. And bigger than many standard chairs of years past were made to hold comfortably.

So the scale of furniture has increased over the last decade — to suit both the size of homes and the size of their occupants, said Max Shangle, professor and chairman of the furniture design department at Kendall College of Art and Design in Michigan.

Some plus-size furniture proudly flaunts its generous proportions, but in many cases, manufacturers and retailers rely on subtle marketing.

Shangle said he knew of a company that made a “wonderful” dining room table and chairs, but the chairs were a bit fragile. So the company added three other styles of seating, including a bench it said would suit families with children.

“In reality, the bench was for folks who wouldn’t fit in the chair,” Shangle said.

He also cited a popular “mother-daughter” chair, the chair-and-a-half advertised as a cosy spot for two people to sit. “I know full well the chair was also sold to folks for whom a single chair would be a little tight,” he said.

Through furniture, observers can track changes over time in human size, home size and fashions. Chairs no longer need to accommodate hoop skirts, for example, and seat heights have gone up as humans have grown taller, Shangle said.

Of all American adults age 20 to 74, about 46 per cent were overweight or obese in 1960, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. By 2005-06, that number had risen to about 73 per cent for Americans 20 or older.

Similarly, the City of Winnipeg last week decided to order a specially designed ambulance that can accommodate obese patients.

The growth of our girth has prompted the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association to revise its test load standards used in the industry to evaluate product safety and durability. The standard for general purpose office chairs is now 250 pounds, up from 220.

“What we have noticed is people wanting bigger, more comfy, cosy sofas,” said Heather Neubaur, manager at the Room & Board store in Culver City, Calif., who emphasized that the demand was driven by all consumers, not just heavy people.

But Sal Alessandro, owner of Valley Leather Furniture in Encino, Calif., which makes custom couches and chairs priced from about $900, said he has seen an increase in sales of furniture specifically for larger people.

“I have definitely sold more, because I use more of that heavy foam” — the sort of foam meant to keep from sinking under the weight of a person upward of 300 pounds, he said. Cushioning is just one of the issues in making furniture for heavy customers. Unlike the stereotype of pratfalls, a heavy person isn’t likely to collapse a couch or an easy chair.

“I have yet to have a wood frame break,” said Denis Devlin, store manager at Munro’s Fine Furniture in Costa Mesa, Calif. “The biggest concern is the strength of the cushioning.”

Alessandro said he also looks at the depth of the sofa, from the back to where it hits the back of the knees; the height; the angle of the back cushions; and the placement of the arm rest. He asks a shopper to sit on some couches, and he looks at how they fit the furniture. Does the small of the back hit at the right spot? Are the feet comfortably on the floor? Is the back pillow high enough?

Shangle said the arms of a chair or sofa need to withstand the stress of being pulled or pushed by an overweight person getting up and down.

Francois Bruneau’s Canadian company, DFC Woodworks Inc., has for about a decade made an Adirondack chair called the Grand, with a 500-pound capacity and a seat that’s two inches wider than first-class airplane seats, he said.

“It came about from a dealer of mine,” Bruneau said. “The dealer was a bit larger, and he wanted a chair for himself and his sister. We started building a custom chair for him, and we said, ‘Wait a minute — there are a lot of bigger people out there.”‘

— Los Angeles Times