How we make our sofas fire safe to strict regulations – yet still genuinely natural...
“We don’t want to treat the outer fabrics, so we add a thin cotton barrier inside that’s fire-retardant. That way the customer never has to sit directly on the nasty spray.” - Rohan Blacker, Schplendid founder
In the UK, upholstered furniture has to meet strict fire safety standards, and quite rightly so. If you’re going to put something large and soft in the middle of your living room, it needs to behave responsibly in the event of a fire.
We fully support that aim, and we build our sofas accordingly.
Where we part company with much of the industry is how those standards are met.
Because while the destination is right, the most common route there involves soaking sofas in chemical fire retardants in ways we’re not comfortable with – especially when there are better, more considered and more natural alternatives.
The problem with the standard industry solution
Most sofas on the market today meet fire regulations in the same basic way: they chemically treat the outer fabric to slow ignition.
It’s cheap and easy and it ticks the regulatory boxes.
But it also means the very surface you sit on – the linen, the velvet, the thing you touch every day – has been sprayed with fire-retardant chemicals.
We don’t like that because it alters the natural feel of the fabric. And frankly, if we did it, it would undermine the point of all the care we put into choosing and using natural materials in the first place.
The Schplendid approach: keep the chemicals away from you
Rather than treating the fabric you sit on, we take a different route.
We use a thin, fire-retardant cotton interliner, hidden inside the upholstery, which does the regulatory business. It's a specific fire-retardant treatment called CETAFLAM PD3300 from UK textile chemists Avocet. This is a well-established, Oeko-Tex®-approved flame retardant formulation that’s designed for cotton and other natural fibres and is free from antimony and halogens, meaning it performs its safety role without relying on heavier chemical systems typically found in treated upholstery fabrics.
That means:
-
the sofa meets the strict British fire safety law (Schedule 3 Group 5, for those who enjoy the footnotes)
-
the outer fabrics remain completely natural
-
and you’re never sitting directly on a chemically treated surface.
.
Why most sofas don’t do this
Honestly? Because it’s cheaper and easier not to.
Spraying the outer fabric is quick, efficient, and requires fewer layers and fewer materials. Adding an internal fire-retardant layer costs more, takes longer, and complicates the build.
But once you’ve gone to the trouble of sourcing pure linens, pure cotton velvets, and wool and coconut husk instead of plastic fibres it feels pretty perverse to then soak the final surface in chemicals just to save a bit of hassle. So we don’t.
Why this matters to us (and to you)
We’ve seen the conversations customers are having – about health, materials, and the sheer amount of chemical junk embedded in modern furniture.
We’re not claiming to have solved everything. But we are trying to make sofas the old-fashioned way from proper materials.
Fire safety is non-negotiable of course, but how you achieve it is a choice. We’ve chosen the route that keeps chemicals away from your skin and still keeps everything legal and safe.
And this is just one of the many ways we're shaking up the sofa industry.
How we ensure fire safety in our sofas – without the nasty chemicals
How we make our sofas fire safe to strict regulations – yet still genuinely natural...
In the UK, upholstered furniture has to meet strict fire safety standards, and quite rightly so. If you’re going to put something large and soft in the middle of your living room, it needs to behave responsibly in the event of a fire.
We fully support that aim, and we build our sofas accordingly.
Where we part company with much of the industry is how those standards are met.
Because while the destination is right, the most common route there involves soaking sofas in chemical fire retardants in ways we’re not comfortable with – especially when there are better, more considered and more natural alternatives.
The problem with the standard industry solution
Most sofas on the market today meet fire regulations in the same basic way: they chemically treat the outer fabric to slow ignition.
It’s cheap and easy and it ticks the regulatory boxes.
But it also means the very surface you sit on – the linen, the velvet, the thing you touch every day – has been sprayed with fire-retardant chemicals.
We don’t like that because it alters the natural feel of the fabric. And frankly, if we did it, it would undermine the point of all the care we put into choosing and using natural materials in the first place.
The Schplendid approach: keep the chemicals away from you
Rather than treating the fabric you sit on, we take a different route.
We use a thin, fire-retardant cotton interliner, hidden inside the upholstery, which does the regulatory business. It's a specific fire-retardant treatment called CETAFLAM PD3300 from UK textile chemists Avocet. This is a well-established, Oeko-Tex®-approved flame retardant formulation that’s designed for cotton and other natural fibres and is free from antimony and halogens, meaning it performs its safety role without relying on heavier chemical systems typically found in treated upholstery fabrics.
That means:
the sofa meets the strict British fire safety law (Schedule 3 Group 5, for those who enjoy the footnotes)
the outer fabrics remain completely natural
and you’re never sitting directly on a chemically treated surface.
.
Why most sofas don’t do this
Honestly? Because it’s cheaper and easier not to.
Spraying the outer fabric is quick, efficient, and requires fewer layers and fewer materials. Adding an internal fire-retardant layer costs more, takes longer, and complicates the build.
But once you’ve gone to the trouble of sourcing pure linens, pure cotton velvets, and wool and coconut husk instead of plastic fibres it feels pretty perverse to then soak the final surface in chemicals just to save a bit of hassle. So we don’t.
Why this matters to us (and to you)
We’ve seen the conversations customers are having – about health, materials, and the sheer amount of chemical junk embedded in modern furniture.
We’re not claiming to have solved everything. But we are trying to make sofas the old-fashioned way from proper materials.
Fire safety is non-negotiable of course, but how you achieve it is a choice. We’ve chosen the route that keeps chemicals away from your skin and still keeps everything legal and safe.
And this is just one of the many ways we're shaking up the sofa industry.