Almost all furniture pieces are constantly exposed to heat. Since that’s almost unavoidable, manufacturers have built them to have some degree of resilience to heat. However, when the heat starts to become excessive, can it do any meaningful harm to furniture?
Heat can certainly harm a piece of furniture, especially when it’s already exposed to moisture. Fortunately, there are tips to help you mitigate some of the disadvantages that heat can cause to your furniture.
In this article, we’ll explore the different ways by which you may be exposing your furniture to heat unhealthily. You’ll also learn some of the best strategies to help protect your furniture from the harshness of heat to keep them in good shape for extended periods.
Is Heat Bad for Furniture?
Depending on temperature changes, wooden furniture will expand or contract. While the furniture will expand when it’s hot, it will contract appropriately when it cools down. If this cycle happens consistently, your furniture will last for a pretty long time.
However, if it only gets exposed to heat alone, it will start developing visible distortions on the surface, disfiguring your furniture. That’s how wooden furniture pieces get heat marks. In some cases, heat marks may also be accompanied by discoloration of the wood.
Before you start to worry about your new furniture needing a replacement in weeks, it’s important to know that most of your household furniture was made to be resistant to heat damage. As long as the interior of your home isn’t dramatically hotter than it should be, you should be fine.
With that said, having a hot hair vent blowing heat consistently into your furniture pieces might not be the best way to preserve your household furniture. Some strategies will help keep your furniture long-lasting and resistant to damage from heat.
If you worry about damage from the heat of the sun that shines constantly upon your sofa, read on to the next section to learn some handy tricks to help mitigate that.
How Do You Protect Wood from Extreme Heat?
Listing the sources of extreme heat for wooden furniture is a waste of time. You should already know if your furniture is being exposed to too much heat. If you don’t, anything dramatically above room temperature is also bad for your wooden furniture too.
If you have heat sources that constantly blow hot air to some of your wooden furniture, here are some of the best ways to protect those pieces of furniture from the damaging effects of the heat.
1. Shield them from the sun’s rays.
One of the primary sources of heat that are capable of dealing any damage to your furniture is the sun. Burning at thousands of degrees at its surface, the sun can spare just enough heat to ensure your wooden furniture doesn’t live through its expected lifespan.
The most logical way to protect your furniture from the sun is by moving them behind a shade, and it works. As long as light from the sun isn’t shining directly on your wooden furniture, it will be resistant to any damage from the sun’s heat.
Shielding anything from the rays of the sun can be quite tricky, partly because the sun (or the earth) is mobile. You must try to position your wooden furniture that’s prone to damage by the sun’s heat in a place where the sun will be unable to reach them throughout its cycle.
While this appears to be pretty simple, it can prove to be impossible in some cases. Depending on how your home was designed, you may have to try out alternatives other than this.
2. Cover the pieces of furniture.
If there are no practical ways to shield some of the wooden pieces of furniture from the heat of the sun, you may have to cover them. There are many furniture covers on sale, made from different materials, and are designed to make your furniture last longer, even with exposure to the sun.
Furniture covers are available in varying sizes and shapes; there’s one for every size of table and chair you’ve ever seen. For best results, try choosing one made from polyvinyl, polyester, or canvas.
Also, you should ensure that the cover is both heat and water-resistant before buying, as those are the two major contributors to the damage of furniture. With a quality furniture cover, you should be able to use your wooden furniture without worrying about heat or moisture.
3. Repaint the furniture.
If the pieces of furniture in question are already showing signs of heat-related damage, you may want to repaint them to put everything under control. Even if you got a furniture cover, you should consider repainting your furniture every other year to keep them looking new.
If the furniture will be exposed to heat constantly, you should consider using latex paint. Latex paint is superior to most alternatives due to its ability to protect against water penetration when applied properly.
4. Apply varnish regularly.
This tip is very similar to the previous one, but in the place of paint, you’ll need to apply a fresh coat of varnish instead. In this case, the varnish performs almost the same protective task as the paint, but unlike paint, it’s not meant to look great.
For the best results, you should always apply a fresh varnish coat at the start of every summer year. If your pieces of furniture are made from pretty strong wood, you may not need varnish as frequently.
If you feel like your furniture isn’t discolored enough to warrant a repaint, but you still need to protect it from heat, you can always fall back to varnish. And remember, you can’t use too much of it!
5. Use heat-resistant window blinds.
In certain cases, it’s just impossible to move the furniture away from the rays of sunlight. A good way to prevent damage to your pieces of furniture in those cases is by installing window blinds specially designed to filter the amount of light that passes through.
While that may sound like an extra investment, your furniture will thank you for it, and your wallet too, since you won’t need to replace your furniture every other year.
