The Best Accent Chairs for the Bedroom, According to an Editor That Sat In All of Them
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In the Mission franchise, we take a different approach to reviewing products that are core to the SPY brand: We go and test them in the wild.
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A chair in the bedroom is important for a lot of reasons. In a smaller apartment, it’s a place to read, or maybe sit wistfully in while looking out the window waiting for your betrothed to come back from the Battle of Gettysburg. Maybe you live alone, are mildly lazy when it comes to cleaning, and keep your laundry on this chair. Let’s be honest, that’s 95% of us. In order to find the best accent chairs for the bedroom though, it required putting them to the test.
Looking online can help identify style, but there’s something to the practical function of a chair that needs to be experienced. A seat can be deceivingly slippery, the fabric can get pilly, or the angle could get too hard on the back for the 30+ shoppers. That’s why it’s important to experience it first hand before buying. Buying six different chairs and shipping them back is a lot to take on both from a work and pay perspective. Luckily, New York city is full of furniture showrooms to get some on-the-ground experience. That’s why for our testing process, we did just that.
The Testing Process
To test these chairs, a rigorous process was employed. I walked to each store, uphill both ways, to sit down in each of them. I spent a full four minutes in each chair, and evaluated it over four main criteria.
Comfort: Chairs need to be comfortable. That’s just…why we’re all here. Chairs that aren’t comfortable to sit on are just tables. That said, a chair in the bedroom serves a different function than a living room chair. These chairs also need to have the cushion strength to sit down and tie one’s shoes from while sitting in it. Chairs that sink too low or raise the feet up awkwardly like a squatty potty will be marked as such.
Shoe tying: People use the chair in their bedroom to sit in when they tie their shoes. So I’ll be tying my laces again in every one of these things.
Laundry: As much as they look nice and this isn’t their intended use case, a good bedroom chair can hold your laundry when you dump it all on there. Whether it’s an errant thrown shirt or a whole load you dump onto there and then forget to fold, a good bedroom chair needs to be able to hold all the laundry in what we’ll call the chair’s “basin.”
Flexibility: The bedroom chairs of today may become the living room or office chairs of tomorrow. As people grow and move from their third apartment at 28 to their fourth apartment at 32, the furniture can be repurposed to suit other needs. For such occasions, it’s important that a chair has a certain amount of dexterity to move in the future should it get called up from AA ball to the major leagues.
Obviously, all testing was done in each individual showroom, since I don’t have the time, money, or desire to go buy six different big chairs, lug them up to my already small apartment, sit in them, and then haul them all the way back before arguing with someone about how it doesn’t matter if I lost a receipt.
Did I get valuable insight on each of these chairs by sitting in them IRL rather than just ordering online? Yes. Did the store clerks appreciate my dumping a full bag of my personal laundry on their showroom models to “test it?” No. They did not. And yet, here are my findings.
West Elm: Mid Century Leather Show Wood Chair
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West Elm has a lot of great things at affordable prices for people. You can tell by all the thirty-somethings moving into their “grown up” apartments with their significant others as soon as you step inside the showroom. (Somehow, no matter what sexual orientation anyone has here, there is always one person who cares so much about the furniture selection, and is mildly annoyed the other one couldn’t care less and does not want to be in this West Elm in Chelsea at all.) This sofa though presents some interesting assets. It’s comfortable, sure. It’s got a thick pad that’s actually nice to sit down on. The reclined nature of the seat is also nice to relax into. As a bedroom chair though, it’s a little cumbersome to vault one’s self up and to tie the laces since the chair clearly wants to you lay back into it. From a laundry perspective, the chair doesn’t have walls, which is a big demerit on the ability to hold a lot of laundry. BUT! For those moments when you’re throwing your laundry on the chair as you return home from the day, the wooden arms are more likely to catch a flung tie or something. For its flexibility, the chair is well suited to adapt to something else in the home. Maybe its a chair opposite a desk in a home office for “meetings,” maybe it’s a slightly less comfortable lounge chair for a living room.
CB2: Gwyneth Ivory Boucle Chair
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This modernist CB2 number looks great. It’s very pretty. For smaller apartments, it’s also pretty compact, which is a good thing! On a comfort level though, it’s pretty lacking. I would never come home and want to just sit in this chair and read my book. Upon sitting on it at the store though, it’s well positioned to just bend down and tie my shoes from. It’s possible that’s what this chair was built to do. I do worry though that the ivory fabric will be stained easily, but I’m generally adverse to white furniture anyway because I’m clumsy at home. From a laundry perspective. The boucle does grab pieces and keep things from slipping, but generally doesn’t have a large enough basin to hold a lot. Maybe that’ll just entice a prospective buyer to actually put away their laundry.
Ikea: Persbol Armchair
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This is a pretty traditional chair in a near quaker style. It’d be a great fit for a bedroom that’s easy to wipe down dust from. The cushion is comfortable, but it’s maybe even better without the cushion. This chair isn’t about comfort, it’s built for function. Bending down to retie my shoes is a breeze, the seat is a flat plane parallel to the ground so you’re not working against the shape of the chair. Oddly enough, the open walls of the chair don’t seem to impact the amount of the laundry it can hold as the spokes on the back keep everything retained like a laundry prison gate. In terms of repurposing this chair later, it’s pretty useful for a lot of places in a larger home: a mudroom for people moving tot he suburbs, or the first of several for a kitchen dining table set perhaps.
Burrow: Nomad Velvet Armchair
This chair has a lot going for it. It’s comfortable, plush, not too pricey, and has a lot of room to grow. The plush cushions of the seat sink down a little bit, but because it’s on a flat plane, it’s not a counterintuitive shape to reach down and tie shoes from. Already having a Burrow sofa though, the seat cushions break down over time fairly quickly. They still hold up, but there is a diminishing quality to be expected. That said, the chair’s versatility is perhaps the best of anything on this list. Several of Burrow’s products, particularly the Nomad series, can be deconstructed and reconstructed as part of a larger sofa or chaise lounge once the other pieces are bought to add on to it with.
BLUDOT: Heyday Lounge Chair
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Blu Dot’s furniture is a little pricier, a little more modern (if you’re into that look) and a little more design-forward, for sure. This chair is sleek looking, and would be comfortable in future settings maybe, like a living room accent chair, should it grow with me to a future home perhaps, but doesn’t have a great sense of utility to tie shoes from. The shape of the seat forces the knees up meaning to tie shoes from it you’ll need to balance on the lip of the rim. That said, this chair is the best of the bunch in terms of laundry holding capabilities. It’s basically a large bowl in which you can store an entire load of laundry in without worrying about a sock escaping. Perhaps in the future it’d make sense to put in a living room, but for my personal style I wouldn’t. For now, though, it’s got all kinds of laundry safely under control.
ANTHROPOLOGIE: Havana Leather Chair
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This is the best all around chair of the bunch. It’s plush, stylish, comfortable, and is walled in enough to hold laundry. The rich leather color of the chair also looks great in a sunny bedroom in the morning, and is angled in such a way that it’s easy to get in and out of when tying a shoe. The leather cushions slip a little I’ve noticed, so for things like angle socks or a smaller garment in the wash it might slip under there, but that’s still better than the floor. As far as its flexibility to other rooms, I’d put this in the living room or a home office happily. I’d take a book to it anywhere it was in the home.
Frequently Asked Questions About Accent Chairs
What makes a good bedroom chair?
Knowing your expectations of it. These aren’t meant to be lounged in. They’re functional, they need to hold things. Buying a pretty chair that you’re not going to be able to keep something on or store things with isn’t helpful to anyone.
Could you put decorative pillows on these accent chairs?
Excellent question. I would suggest stacking the pillows vertically, and leaning them against one another. This should work for all the chairs on this list, apart from the CB2 model as its too shallow.
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