What Quality Means at Maiden Home

Sourcing and purchasing beautiful, high quality furniture for their clients is a designer’s number one goal, and we take seriously our responsibility to be a source for just this type of gorgeous piece. So from the beginning, we’ve committed ourselves to designing furniture that exceeds our clients expectations and weaves seamlessly into their most beautiful projects.  

“Time and time again our clients are blown away by the quality and construction of their chairs and sofas. We love that we can offer such well made pieces and not stretch our client's budgets.”

- Leslie Martin, M+M Design Consultants

We’re taking you behind the scenes on the quality that we’ve built into each piece of Maiden Home furniture - and why you can trust us to deliver furniture that your clients will love for years to come.  

The Skill

North Carolina is home to the world’s premier furniture craftsmen, and they are the magic behind every Maiden Home piece. Each of our pieces is handmade to order, using techniques that have been passed down through generations and developed long before Ford invented the assembly line. That’s why you’ll find unique, handcrafted details on our products, like the fan-pleated roll-arm of the Carmine sofa or the mitered corners of our Essex and Wythe beds, that have long been stripped out of mass produced furniture. We design each piece in our collection to celebrate the skill of our partners who craft them with such care.

Compare to: Most big-box retailers - even those with fancy showrooms across the country - have shipped their production overseas to places like China and Vietnam where furniture can be produced cheaply, but at a disappointing quality standard. Because of their lack of skill, details are executed sloppily, and the longevity of a piece will be sacrificed, leaving your clients with furniture that wouldn’t meet your standards five years down the line.  

The Frame

We precision-cut our upholstered frames using 1” thick plywood made of kiln dried hardwood that is glued, double doweled and corner blocked for extra support. In some instances, like our Leroy and Hayes chairs, we use solid kiln-dried hardwood for the frame. All this means no warping, no cracking, no splitting and no faulty corners. This level of investment into the fundamental elements of each piece gives you the confidence that our pieces will meet or exceed the quality levels of many higher-priced pieces. We’re so confident in the longevity of our frames, each is covered by a lifetime warranty.

Compare to: Mass produced alternatives at our price point utilize 0.5” frames, sometimes made from particleboard, that will literally crumble over time. They might skip glue and corner blocks, using simple stapling to connect the pieces that are fundamental to the architecture of your client’s piece.

The Springs

Springs are the unsung hero of sofa comfort: important for both the comfort and durability of upholstered seating, these essential building blocks need to be selected with careful consideration. This is why we’ve designed each of our sofas to utilize the perfect spring construction for the shape and comfort profile of the piece. All of our springs are covered by a lifetime warranty so that no matter which space you choose Maiden Home for, formal living room or family den, comfort is assured for the lifetime of the piece.

Compare to: Buried inside the core of your client's piece, spring construction is a relatively easy place for other brands to cut costs without the customer immediately knowing. One of the most common offenses in lower-grade furniture is spreading out a lower number of springs–translating into a more uneven, uncomfortable sit that will degrade over time. This leaves the piece looking off-balance, lumpy, and low quality over time.

The Cushions

We couldn’t find the perfect cushions for our sofas, so we designed our very own–at its foundation you’ll find an ultra-resilient, long-lasting core. Made of high-resiliency Ultracel foam, our cushions are the perfect balance of sink-in comfort and support. Each foam core is then covered in an ultra-plush microfiber or down-and-feather wrap custom designed for the silhouette of the piece. All of our foam has a density of 1.8 lbs and compression value of 21 lbs. If there are any irregularities, each of our cushions is covered by a five year warranty.

Compare to: Quality cushions are not cheap, so they become enemy number one for brands looking to increase their margins by cutting costs. They use significantly lower density and compression values and forgo any warranty at all in the pursuit of cheaper cushions. The most common frustration we hear about other brands’ cushions is that they look and feel great for the first year.

The Fabric

How you choose to cover your client’s upholstered piece is one of the biggest costs associated with producing furniture. At Maiden Home we’ve hand selected premium materials that carefully balance a beautiful hand and natural beauty with the type of performance qualities that clients look for more and more. Our fabric mill partners include Valdese Weavers, a North Carolina mill that has been in operation for more than a century and produces some of the finest materials in America.  

If you’d like to use a different material, we also offer Customer’s Own Material (COM) on all of our shapes - allowing you the flexibility to design each space exactly as you envision it.

Compare to: Big brands often source their materials internationally, sacrificing quality for cost yet again, meaning itchy synthetics and materials that pill more than a bargain-basement sweater. Additionally, because they are producing their product overseas and shipping their pieces internationally, each piece is sprayed with anti-fungal agents to prevent damage in the shipping container. If the feel of their fabric doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, that sure will.

The Details

We’ve made sure to include all the details that make owning high-end sofas a pleasure. On our seating collections, all of our fabric seat and back cushions are fully upholstered. Leather cushion backs are upholstered in a special upholstery denim to provide a more comfortable and supportive seat that doesn't shift or slip. Sofa seat cushions are also designed with hidden cushion tie-downs that ensure they don’t edge forward over time. We’ve even designed our loose back cushions, such as those seen on our Sullivan, Irving, Warren and Dune sofas, with three individually sewn channels that keeps the cushion fill from settling unevenly over time. On our beds, we've engineered mitered corners for a custom look that belies its super simple, no-tools assembly, and offer every one of our beds with a platform standard. These small details add up to a better, higher-quality product that will reflect the discerning eye of an interior designer.

Compare to: Most companies have simplified the design of their beds to have 90-degree connections, making them much easier and cheaper to produce. It’s also relatively common for sofa cushions to be backed with cheap fabric and even velcroed in place, making them impossible to flip.

We’d love for you to feel the quality of our fabrics and leathers - the first step to designing a custom piece for your next project. If you’d like to purchase a full set of swatches, you can do so here. If you have any questions surrounding the quality you can expect from Maiden Home, please feel free to reach out to us at trade@maidenhome.com to connect with your personal Trade Client Specialist.