My Lifelong Aversion to Foam Rubber in the Home

March 7, 2017 Examiner Media Home Guru

By Bill Primavera

Perhaps you’ve never thought much about foam rubber as a stuffing for furnishings, but I for one have never cared for it. In fact, I’ve always had a kind of inborn aversion toward foam rubber.

I remember how disappointed I was not so long ago when I ordered a wingback chair from Macy’s through a newspaper ad, not thinking about the materials used, and finding it stuffed with foam rubber. Well, I thought, it’s not as though I acquired the throne from King Tut’s tomb. It was relatively inexpensive and I’d just live with it until I found a replacement with better materials before removing the rubbery edition to the guest bedroom. For me, sitting on foam rubber makes me feel suspended in space by little air bubbles and never quite settled in place. This is not a new issue with me.

I still remember the joy and excitement when my mother came home one day with several tremendous paper bags filled with new pillows for the whole family.

“And they’re foam rubber!” she exclaimed, as though modern science had finally reached our home. I was only seven years old and had little to say about what surrounded me in our home, but one thing was certain: when I lay my head on foam rubber, I couldn’t sleep. I simply tossed the pillow aside and lay flat on the mattress.

Mother insisted that I try to get used to it, but after a week of tossing my new pillow aside, feisty fellow that I was, she finally relented and bought me a feather down pillow. My older brother and sister knew from that point that I was the “different” sibling in the family, and I rather liked the distinction.

There was only one application in my home where foam rubber has served as an ice breaker among first-time visitors to my home. It was its use as the mat beneath the wall-to-wall carpeting in our central hallway, the result of a somewhat arbitrary decision made some years ago. The red carpeting already had a deep rich pile, and combined with the mat, visitors literally sink into it as they walk across, all but losing their balance – especially women in heels.

I couldn’t swear to it because I’m not the testing lab for Consumer Reports, but I suspect that its use has extended the life of that carpeting many years.

Where did this foamy substance come from, I wondered, and how long has it been around? I learned online that the pioneering work was done by an Otto Bayer in Germany in 1937. I’m sure many people who enjoy bouncing around on it are grateful for his work ever since.

But as for me, I’m an old-fashioned guy who likes sofa pillows filled with goose feathers and goose down that have to be plumped up again after I sit on them. I remember the time when an exceptionally large fellow came to our home and sat on our camelback loveseat and all but squashed its all-down pillow to a flat pancake. When he rose to leave the room, unconsciously I went to the chair to fluff up the pillow again. While he made a joke of it, saying that I might at least have waited until he left the room to restore the furniture, I’m sure he was hurt by it, and I was embarrassed.

While down pillows are the highest quality filling that can be purchased, they are also the most expensive. They must have down-proof ticking under the upholstery fabric to prevent feathers from poking through. Sometimes they still do. Also, there is the constant re-fluffing required. However, down used with other materials, such as polyester fiber, is a good option.

To be fair, there are foams labeled “high resilient” (HR) that are more comfortable and reduce that droopy, saggy feel that can come over time. It even comes with an “indentation force deflection” number ranging between 6 and 45 that tells you in advance the softness or firmness of the upholstered piece.

The foam stuffing in that disappointing wingback chair, however, must have been on the lower end of the scale. It has since been donated to a worthy charity and hopefully to a happy new owner who doesn’t have so much a princess-and-the-pea issue as I do. I have since replaced that chair with one that features a pillow that, when I plop on it, doesn’t bounce back at me.

Bill Primavera is a Realtor® associated with William Raveis Real Estate and Founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com). His real estate site is www.PrimaveraRealEstate.com, and his blog is www.TheHomeGuru.com. To engage the services of The Home Guru to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.