Functional Requirements of a Recliner

Comfort

• The primary reason that most people purchase a recliner is for comfort. Because they are large, heavily padded and feature mechanisms that allow them to tilt back and raise the feet, recliners are really a combination between a bed and a chair, and many people find themselves unexpectedly falling asleep in them. A recliner that doesn't deliver comfort, whether because of poor design or some malfunction of workmanship, is not fulfilling its most basic requirement.

Rocking

• One of the mechanisms in a recliner allows it to rock back and forth, which increases the comfort factor that the person sitting in the recliner experiences. The rocking mechanism is built into the base of the recliner and is protected from outside interference and hidden from view by the lower case of the chair that surrounds the bottom. If foreign objects are introduced to the underside of the recliner, they can interfere with the rocking mechanism and make the recliner dysfunctional.

Safety

• A recliner needs to be safe, as well as comfortable, to have one sitting in the living room. Many recliners feature a piece of fabric that is built in and extends from the seat of the chair to the extended foot rest when the foot rest is up, which prevents small children from gaining access through that space to the underside of the chair, something that could be very dangerous because the chair could then close on them, causing injury, suffocation or death. Recliners also need to be securely seated on a floor so there is no danger of them tipping over onto a child, elderly person or pet.

Spinning

• In addition to the rocking mechanism, the base of a recliner features an axle that allows the recliner to turn around in a circle, which is useful for someone who is sitting in the recliner in a large room, because he can turn the chair to see in another direction without getting out of the chair. Not all recliners have this feature, but those that do are not functioning properly unless they can do this.