Precision in furniture is mostly invisible. You notice it only when it is missing: a cabinet door that sits 2 mm proud of its neighbour, a seam that drifts off the centre of a cushion, a table that rocks on a tiled floor. This article explains where precision matters in a piece of furniture, which tolerances are typical, and how you can check them yourself in a showroom or on delivery.
At Sitdesign every piece is handmade in our own factory in Büyükçekmece, Istanbul, so these details are part of our daily work. Fine detail is easiest to judge on case furniture with patterned surfaces, such as the marquetry cabinet door in contrasting veneers we showed at CNR İMOB 2020, so we start there.
Measurements: where millimetres matter
Furniture dimensions are usually listed in centimetres, but the parts are made in millimetres. A common rule in cabinet making is that visible joints and gaps should be held within about 1 mm, while hidden structural parts can tolerate a little more as long as the piece stays square.
- Squareness: measure both diagonals of a cabinet carcass or a door. If the two numbers are equal, the box is square; a difference of more than 2 mm usually shows up as a door that does not close evenly.
- Door and drawer gaps: the reveal around doors is typically 2 to 3 mm. More important than the exact number is that it is the same on all sides and between neighbouring doors.
- Level: a table top or sideboard top should sit level, with adjustable glides to take up uneven floors rather than wedges pushed under a leg.
On a cabinet, these are the lines your eye follows first: the gap between the doors, the top edge and the plinth. Our cabinet collection, including the Charyton cabinet, is a good place to look at them.
Joints: strength you do not see
A joint has two jobs: to hold parts in exact alignment and to carry load without loosening. Typical solutions in solid wood and frame making include:
- Mortise and tenon: a tongue on one part fits a slot in the other. It resists racking well and suits table and chair legs.
- Dowels: round wooden pins glued into drilled holes. Accurate drilling is what makes them strong, because a hole 1 mm off pulls the parts out of line.
- Corner blocks: glued and screwed blocks inside a frame corner that stop it from twisting under repeated sitting.
Wood also moves with humidity, mostly across the grain rather than along it. A well-made solid top is fixed so that it can expand and shrink a few millimetres across its width without cracking; on wide tops this is usually done with slotted fixings rather than glue along the full length. Pieces in our wood collection show how tops, legs and rails meet.
Upholstery: frame, tension and alignment
In an upholstered piece, precision starts under the cover. Sitdesign upholstered frames are made of kiln-dried beech, and seats use high-resilience (HR) foam with sprung seating. Kiln drying brings the timber to a stable moisture content before it is cut, which helps the frame keep its dimensions once it is upholstered.
Tension is the next variable. Leather and fabric must be pulled evenly across the frame: too loose and the surface wrinkles after a short time in use; too tight and the seams strain and the cushion edge loses its shape. Points to check:
- Seams and piping run straight and sit on the same line on every cushion.
- Stitch length looks even, with no puckering at the corners.
- On a buttoned back, the buttons line up in rows and the folds between them point the same way.
- Seat cushions of the same model return to the same height after you sit down and stand up.
On a sofa such as the Chicago sofa, look at these points along the front edge of the seat and the top of the back. For the layers under the cover, see The Anatomy of a Sofa.
Finishing: surface, edges and colour
Finishing is where small errors become visible under light. Lacquer and oil reveal every sanding scratch, so surfaces are typically sanded in stages with progressively finer grit before the first coat, and lightly sanded again between coats. Good signs on a finished piece:
- An even sheen across the whole surface, including edges and the inside of doors.
- Edges eased to a consistent small radius, not sharp in one place and rounded in another.
- Veneer patterns matched across neighbouring panels, so the grain or marquetry continues from one door to the next.
- Colour that matches between the solid wood parts and the veneered parts of the same piece.
For leather, finishing means colour and surface. We work only with genuine leather, in 76 colours across 12 colour families, and Italian leathers form our top leather group. A screen cannot show sheen or grain accurately, so we send leather samples on request for you to compare next to your wood and stone.
A short checklist before you order
- Ask for the exact dimensions and check them against your room, including door openings and lifts.
- Look along edges and gaps at eye level rather than from above.
- Open every door and drawer: they should move without catching and close flush.
- Sit on each seat of a sofa and compare how the cushions recover.
- Check leather or fabric samples in the light of the room where the piece will stand.
Custom dimensions are available on request. If you change a size, confirm the final dimensions in writing before production starts, so that every measurement above is set against the right numbers.
If you are considering a piece and want to compare sizes, leathers or wood finishes, contact us for leather samples and a quote.
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