Leather Nailhead Sofas
Buy the best leather nailhead sofas selected and recommended by interior designers. By Caroline Patterson.
Timeless in design, you can find leather nailhead sofas in many types of home styles. Although nailhead trim is a simple design, it boosts a bland sofa into a much more elegant piece. For a formal appeal pair two leather couches together, and for a textural piece mix and match a leather sofa with a linen chair.
Leather Nailhead Sofas
Buying Guide
Caroline Patterson
Interior Design Expert
Caroline is a young, New York-based interior designer and home decor writer, obsessed with textiles and designer furniture. Backed with rigorous training from a prestigious design school, as well as a profound understanding of material quality and fabric care, she offers spot-on advice on how to furnish your place with reliable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing pieces.
Leather sofas with nailhead trim are considered as premier, top-of-the-line furniture pieces. If you’ve visited a home or office that features a leather couch with detailing, then you definitely know that it makes an impression. It looks nothing but classy and luxurious.
A leather sofa that’s exquisite on the outside won’t last long if its frame isn’t given quality construction.
- To make sure that you are investing on a leather sofa with nailhead trim that’s of high quality, the frame should be made of kiln-dried hardwood. The process of kiln drying takes out moisture from the wood and enables it to remain shapely and stable even after decades. Particleboard and plywood frames warp over time. They are definitely not good for leather sofas. A good quality leather chair is heavy as it has dense hardwood framing.
- A quality frame has well-formed joints. They're glued, dowelled, and then screwed. The corners are then strengthened even further through the addition of reinforcements (may be in the form of blocks). A leather sofa with lesser quality is just fastened with staples. It certainly doesn’t offer long-lasting stability.
- A leather sofa with hand tied coils, as well as no-sag inner springs is the best you can find. Each spring of the sofa is attached to an adjoining spring using a strong twine, which is threaded from the front to the back and from side to side resulting in securely tied springs.
- The cushioning must be of high density and resistant to collapse. This may be asking for too much, but these aspects are essential as they make the investment worthwhile. A high-density cushion is firmer. If its density rating is 1.8, then that signifies great quality. A low-density cushion will just lose its shape and break down before you can even make good use of the sofa.
Leather sofas with nailhead trim are either made of top-of-the-line leather or bonded leather. If you are not familiar with the different types of leather, don’t worry as most people aren't! We'll list everything you need to know about your different options to ensure you make an informed purchasing decision.
The best types of leather for furniture like sofas are top grain and full grain. They are taken from a hide’s outermost layer.
- Full grain would be the most durable and the strongest type of leather available. Its grain pattern is ultra-tight and prominent. It's resistant to moisture, plus it develops a beautiful patina as the material ages.
- As for top grain, it’s also taken from a hide’s outer layer but it is sanded to take out any scratches, branding, barbed wire nicks, and other blemishes of the hide. This means top grain leather has a consistent appearance. This type feels soft and luxurious, but it’s less durable compared to full grain.
It's important to note that top grain and full-grain leather can acclimate to a person's body temperature. Both materials contain 12 to 14 percent water, so they will feel cold at first but will most definitely warm to your body’s temperature in mere seconds.
Bonded leather, on the other hand, is made of scraps of leather. It has a synthetic underlayer and it only contains 17% genuine leather.