VOCs, toxic glue, formaldehyde and flame retardants shouldn't be lurking all over your kids' rooms! But finding safe furniture for your home can be a daunting task.
How to Find Safe Furniture for Your Family
An easy way to locate safe furniture is to look for unupholstered, solid wood pieces that contain no foam or fiberboard. This eliminates the need for flame retardant chemicals and formaldehyde glue. A quick inquiry to the company can also give you the information you need about the finishes used on the wood. Make sure they're natural, water-based and no or low-VOC (volatile organic compound).
You can also request safer materials at your local furniture store, and they may be able to accommodate your needs by sourcing flame retardant-free materials and non-toxic glues and finishes.
Safe Furniture + Mattress Guide
Our amazingly large list of finds includes furniture with no or low-VOC finishes and glues, and no formaldehyde or flame retardants. Most of these manufacturers also use sustainable, eco-friendly and natural or recycled materials in their products.
Safe Furniture Manufacturers
These companies are committed to providing furniture that meets our safe furniture standards, so you can purchase any of their products with peace of mind.
- West Elm
- Furnature
- Dapwood
- Cisco Home
- Endicott Home
- ICustomSofa
- Ekla Home
- Eco Balanza
- Eco Select
- Bean Products
- Urban Woods
- The BedWorks of Maine
- Green Sofas
- Eco-Terric
Select Flame Retardant & Formaldehyde-free Furniture Pieces
These companies make only select pieces or lines of furniture that meet our safe furniture standards. It's important to inquire about the piece you're interested in to confirm the materials used before purchasing from these manufacturers.
- Viesso – Eco-Friendly line of furniture meets our standards
- Vaughn-Bassett – All solid wood products are acceptable
- The Futon Shop – All solid wood products are acceptable
- Vermont Woods Studios – All solid wood products are acceptable
- Design Within Reach
- La-Z-Boy
- Dania/Scandinavian Designs
- Ikea
Kids' Furniture
These manufacturers offer children's furniture that meets our safe furniture standards.
- Oeuf
- Pacific Rim
- Community Playthings
- Greenplay
- Kalon Studios
- DucDuc
- Angeles – NaturalWood line of furniture meets our standards
Mattresses
These manufacturers provide mattresses free of flame retardants, PVC and VOCs (volatile organic compounds), and many of them are GREENGuard certified and use all organic materials.
- Avocado Green
- Naturpedic
- Omi Mattress
- Savvy Rest
- Natura
- Lifekind
- Green Sleep
- The Wool Bed Company
- Royal-Pedic
- Naturally Organic
An important piece of information we always include with our mattress recommendations is the mattress wrapping protocol should you need to find an effective way to shield your children from an off-gassing mattress. It's a fairly simple technique that can make a huge difference in maintaining the delicate health of a child.
10 comments
I don’t mean to question your research, but I have read that it is impossible to obtain a mattress not treated with fire retardants unless you have a doctor’s prescription, due to the requirement to pass the blowtorch test. Have you heard/read anything about Intellibed mattresses? I’m having a hard time with all the conflicting information out there.
It can be very confusing, Leslie! That’s one of the main reasons we put the effort into providing this information for people.
Mattress manufacturers are required to meet certain flame retardant requirements, but they’re allowed to do that by means other than toxic chemical treatments. This means their products can be flame retardant-free, but possess certain qualities that meet the requirements of the law (like wool which is a material that’s inherently flame retardant).
You may need to obtain a doctor’s note to purchase a mattress made without chemical flame retardants if that mattress doesn’t have other properties that allow it to meet the requirements of the law (like a 100% cotton mattress with no inherent flame retardant properties).
Hope that helps clarify it for you! ~Laura
I read that this bed is not safe.
Do you know anything about Astrabeds mattresses?
No I’m afraid we’ve never looked into that brand. We’ll keep it in our list to check into though!
Thanks- please keep us posted!
i think you’ve overlooked a great source for American made, solid wood, non toxic baby cribs – babyecotrends.com
we bought our nursery set there and they offer a water based, formaldehyde free finish. the service was great & they kept us up to date through the whole process. our nursery set arrived and it was even better than we had anticipated. two thumbs up!
On your recommendation we contacted and ordered a sofa online from iCustomSofa.com. We have tried to call them numerous times with NO answer any day, any hour. Each time they have sent us an email as ‘reply.’ We had to send them a check for the entire amount in advance. The sofa was supposed to be ready two weeks after the check cleared. That check cleared over a month ago. We’ve had ‘a machine broke down’ a couple of times & begging off for Memorial Day. Then earlier this week they asked us for a preferred shipper. We told them UPS was fine. Shipping was supposed to be free. Today we got an email saying they can’t find a shipper. They are in Hickory NC and we are in Greenville. This is not even possible. They offered to ship it to CHARLOTTE if we could pick it up there. Did I mention we are retired? How are we going to get these boxes when we were relying on our son to come help assemble it? The next call is to the Better Business Bureau and the NC Dept of Justice.
Fast forward to early this morning when we got an email saying they had confused us with a customer in Charlotte, that ours would be shipped this week. I will wait. ONE more week.
Huckleberry Kids Rooms has a fantastic assortment of safe, eco-friendly and non-toxic kids furniture. I highly recommend them. Here’s a link to their Safety information.
https://www.huckleberrykidsrooms.com/pages/warranty-safety