Design V's Comfort
When making the right design choices for our clients, Hatstand Design decided to interview 100 real people to find out what furniture design means to them. Hatstand Design knows that every clients design ideas are different and therefore we should not just understand these needs but also learn from them.
When designing you home, choosing the right chairs for a space is important. They must be functional, beautiful, high quality and above all...comfy! Read the DESIGN FOR LIFE story below...
1. DESIGN FOR LIFE story
Interviewed: Freelance Photographer
'In terms of our design choices we were very much guided by the apartment itself. It’s all very modern - open plan with white walls, high ceilings and plenty of glass - so we wanted the furniture to be in keeping with that. But, at that same time, it’s not that large a space and we wanted to fit in a breakfast bar, dining area and lounge so we needed to keep things minimal both for space and to maintain that light, airy quality that had attracted us to the apartment in the first place. Which wouldn’t make black the obvious colour except that the kitchen was already black so it made sense to stick with that especially as neither of us are particular fans of colour to start with. And this made things easier in the long room as black was the common colour amongst all the different manufacturers we were looking at and so there was no difficulty matching pieces from different collections whilst still giving the appearance that everything belongs together.
Finding the chairs was a particular labour of love but given that they were the items that would likely get the most prolonged use it we thought it was vital we get the right ones. In this case it wasn’t the minimal side of the brief that gave us difficulty but the need for comfort. Most of the minimal chairs we looked at were hopelessly uncomfortable, either too firm or too unstable or both. We came upon the chair we wanted largely by chance, I was looking for a Barcelona chair to use in a virtual reality project I was working on and the chair we ended up going for was by chance in a bundle of CGI models from the same manufacturer. From the moment I saw it, I fell in love with it. It was just the most perfectly chair-like chair, the sort of chair that if you had to come up with a minimal ideal vision of chairness, it’s what you’d come up with, and so graceful in its curves, so elegant on its proportions. But was it comfy? I read up all I could about it and watched videos on the internet about the manufacturing process but none of that was the same as actually sitting in it yourself so the next problem was that we couldn’t find one in any nearby shops. In fact, as far as we could tell, the only place that had one was a single shop in London and they didn’t open on weekends. So we took some time off work, made a special trip to London and then even when we arrived at the shop they weren’t sure they actually had any of them. Eventually they found them in the basement and they were even more beautiful than the pictures I’d seen had conveyed. But then came the moment of truth... And fortunately they were even more comfortable than I’d hoped - perfectly shaped, light but sturdy, cushioned but supportive and the rest is history, except I will confess to weeping a little when we eventually had them delivered a few weeks later.'
Listening to your DESIGN FOR LIFE stories inspires us to make more innovative design choices that suit your needs. Start your DESIGN FOR LIFE journey with Hatstand Design.
