QUICK GUIDE TO TOG RATINGS

3 Tog  - for hot summers

4.5 Tog - for average summer weather and through the spring and autumn in well-insulated bedrooms


9.0 Tog - for spring-autumn weather and through the winter in well-insulated bedrooms


10.5 Tog – This is a good tog rating for all year round use.

12.0 Tog - for use in winter in fairly well insulated bedrooms


13.5 Tog - for in winter in cooler bedrooms


15.0 Tog – For the chilliest of temperatures

Problems can arise when a couple sharing a duvet has different tog requirements.  If one of you is coldblooded and needs to be at the higher end of the tog rating yet the other is constantly kicking over covers as a result of overheating, what tog is a dilemma. Separate beds may be the answer but there is another solution. Available on the market now are quilts with split warmth.  The summer one is made up of a cool side with a tog rating of 4.5 and a slightly warmer side with a tog rating of seven. The winter duvet has 10.5 and 13.5 tog halves.

Once you sorted out your togs, you may want to change other areas of your bedroom. Have a look at AKKA’s beautiful handcrafted wooden bedroom furniture. There are ranges for every taste, from the minimalist to the classic and are lovingly handcrafted in walnut or oak.  Not only do AKKA make wonderful beds and amazing wardrobes but they also create many other wooden bedroom accessories, from chests of drawers to underbed drawers, mirrors, dressing tables, tall boys and blanket chests.

Number 1

Statement bed + bold rug + streamlined accessories = Colourful yet clean

This look is about the bed as the focal point of the room , so to maintain balance other items are kept deliberately minimal. And when it comes to a rug and linens , let the bed guide your colour choices.

Number 2

Clean white + delicate pattern + gold accents = pretty modern

White is very restuful and can work wonderfully in a bedroom , but to avoid a stark or clinical feel it’s important to introduce a little textural relief. Use a wallpaper , bed linen or even a choice piece of bedroom furniture to add some delicate pattern and colour.

Number  3

Warm wood + a shot of colour + luxury underfoot = Chic and simple

Wardrobes with mirrored doors and wooden beds with under bed drawers underneath are great for small spaces – make the most of every inch ! If you do have the room , a blanket box at the end of the bed is a luxurious extra – it can serve as both seat or a place to leave hastily abandoned clothes , books and breakfast trays. Chests of drawers and bedsides can also be warm in in either oak or walnut.

There are normally tell tale signs when your bed and mattress need changing. Do you wake up in the night with an aching back or keep rolling into your partner? Have you ‘turned’ the mattress and now fall into a hollow part of the mattress formed by your body posture?  When you lay towards the edge of your bed, does the mattress not support your weight and is showing signs or wear?

Research done by sleep expert Dr Chis Idzikowski found that people with uncomfortable beds and mattresses sleep one hour  less than people who have comfortable beds!  The Furniture Industry Research Association shows that beds and mattresses can deteriorate by as much as 70% over 10 years!

If you are one of those people who need to change a bed or mattress why don’t you have a look at AKKA furniture?  We stock eight different styles of wooden beds ranging from 3ft to 6ft in size, in either American white oak or American black walnut.  To complement our beds there is an extensive range of wooden chests, wardrobes and accessories.  Our mattress supplier has chosen to accompany us on our journey is dreamworks beds.  They have a strong passion like us to provide a comprehensive well designed product.

With a spring ( no pun intended) in our step why not get down to some basic cleaning and oiling of your wooden bedroom furniture that you bought from Akka Furniture?  Just a little time spent here will prolong and enhance the life of your bedroom furniture as it is real solid wood.

Real wood furniture is manufactured with a moisture content of between 10% to 12% but if your bedroom furniture is placed into direct strong sunlight or in front of a radiator then there is a chance that your chest of drawers or bedsides will gradually dry out.  This is why you will need to re – oil the furniture.

The best way to re-oil our bedroom furniture is to follow these simple instructions:

1. Clear all your clothes out of the drawers plus anything laying on top of the unit.

2. Place the furniture outside.

3. Get some 220 grit sandpaper and sanding block from your local D.I.Y store.

4. Rub the piece of furniture down following the grain left to right. NEVER  across the grain.

5. Get a lightly damp cloth and take the dust off the furniture. Let the unit totally dry.

6. Take a lint free cloth and some Danish Oil and rub the oil into the wood following the grain.

7. Leave outside to dry.

8. Place the furniture back into your bedroom space.

All of the above can be carried out on all of our bedroom pieces such as chests of drawers, bedside cabinets , wardrobes, dressing tables and blanket boxes.

The dining room and lounge will mean that you your work area will be on show to all your friends and family who come round to visit.  The spare bedroom often seems to be a very popular choice .

Here are some general ideas that could make the difference .

If the workstation is in the bedroom consider a fold away desk that won’t be on show all of the time.

If it does fold away what about all the wires from the computer , fax , printer and phone.  Is there a cable management system that could keep this under control and out of sight?

The desk and chair must be the correct height for you.  This stops backache and eye strain.

Have you got a light on your desk?  This could be directed onto the work surface.

Paint the walls a neutral colour that will stimulate and be creative.  No big bright colours like reds and oranges.

Do you work well with background music?  If so have an i-pod dock with a radio to hand.

Can you get a workstation that will have shelves built in?  Or can you put shelves up.?  This will keep everything organised and clutter free.

Always have a shredder and a recycling waste basket to hand.

If you have a built in wardrobe in the bedroom could you use part of it to store printing materials and files?  You maybe could use the bottom drawer from a chest of drawers to store things.  Under bed drawers could also be used as things will be out of sight.

In the end the main thing is that the workstation doesn’t take over your bedroom space.  Can you  still  walk around your wooden bed?  Can you open the wardrobe doors?  Can you open the drawers from the chest of drawers?  Have you still got space for the bedside cabinets?

Can you still fit in all the bedroom furniture you want?

There’s a real art to handling wood . That’s why we make each piece of furniture indivdually , giving the chest of drwaers or the oak wardrobe the same attention to detail it deserves and at every build stage. We hand select all of solid timber products but the same can be said for the real wood veneers that we use aswell. Only the best will do.

All of the doors and drawers are hand assembled then oiled with three coats of Danish oil to ensure a high degree of colour match throughout every piece of furniture that will end up on show in the bedroom. However  there are always individual variations of colour and grain , so when we say our product is unique we mean it and the same goes for your bedroom furniture.

Finishes to your furniture should always complement the choosen wood. Take our oak range for instance. The danish oil brings out those delicate honey tones which only enhances our minimal classic shaker designs.

At Akka furniture we like to look at the bedroom as a challenge, an opportunity to get creative and make the most of every inch of space.  Believe it or not , although each person’s situation and needs are different , the biggest problem is always space or the lack of it. Which is why it may surprise you to know that there is always loads of it but it’s normally ignored or becomes full of clothes that you don’t wear anymore.

Clear out all those old clothes and shoes from your bedroom furniture pieces such as chests of drawers, wardrobes, dressing tables , blanket boxes and bedside cabinets and trasform your bedroom into that dream environment that you have always dreamed of.  Remember if you feel relaxed and stress free walking into your bedroom this will always lead to a good nights sleep !!!!!!!

There are a number of good reasons why you should choose F.S.C stamped timber for your bedroom furniture sets.

1. All the timber can be tracked from the forest to the finished furniture product.

2. F.S.C  timber is endorsed by such charties as WWF , The Woodland Trust and Greenpeace.

3. Some parts if not all of the forests are protected because endangered or rare animals and plants are located within it’s boundaries.

4. Forest owners try to employ local people to run and log the forests. This way the local people can earn a living from their local source – the forest.

5. Future generations will be able to work and earn from the forests.

6. It’s not only furniture that the F.S.C label can be found on. Decking , floors , paper and kitchen utensils are just a few other examples.

AKKA furniture makes sure that we fully utilize the full potential of all the log from the tree. We take all of the premimum central cuts of timber and make sure these are used for the drawer fronts , cabinet tops and also the siderails for our solid wooden beds. This means that all the external parts of the wooden cabinets , oak beds , walnut beds and other bedroom accessories we manufacture are showing off the best parts of a quality timber such as american white oak and american black walnut. We don’t just scrap the whitewood called sapwood,  this is used for our drawer sides and backs on the wooden chests. By choosing this method the white of the wood is hidden within the carcass.

If you decide that you want to reinvent your own bedroom furniture here are a few tips and pointers:

If your furniture has a finish on it you must rub down the finish totally with a course sandpaper followed by finer grit paper.

Once this is done fill in any imperfections such as dents and cracks with wood filler.  Let this harden up and then sand flush.

Get a damp cloth and wipe away any sawdust or debris left from sanding. Let the furniture dry completely.

Apply an acrylic primer and let this dry.

Lightly rub this down with a 220 grit paper to key for the top coat.

Apply any oil based gloss, eggshell paint which can be any colour you choose.

In the current times painting your old wooden bedroom furniture set is a great idea to give your bedroom a new appearance  for just a small amount of your time and the expense of the paint.

Because we at Akka bedroom furniture design, manufacture and sell directly to you the customer we can be very competitive on pricing as we have such low overheads plus when you speak to somebody it is going to be the owners who are answering your questions whatever they are ,  not a sales person.  We believe that it’s important that we try and convey our quality of the comprehensive range we carry in solid oak and walnut through the website so customers can make an informed decision on us.

Last weekend we had one of those family days out to a large out of town shopping complex….. Bluewater!

After finally being worn down by the weather and the wife we ended up in a well known depatment store.  The wife was straight to the clothing department , kids safely deposited in the technology area and I quickly slipped off to the furniture depatment. To be fair there was quite  a few customers looking around the furniture on offer but in my opinion the quality didn’t match up with the price tag on each wooden piece.

1.  Drawer fronts were lots of pieces glued together instead of one solid piece.

2.  Drawer sides and backs weren’t of a matching wood to the drawer front.  Cheaper wood.

3.  The chests had a cheap ply back that didn’t match and wasn’t grooved into the framework of the chest. It was stapled in.

4. The wooden tops were full of white sapwood not plain clear oak.

I just wished iI could have set up a bedroom roomset from Akka alongside their options and let the public see for themselves the quality differences between the two bedroom furniture sets.  When it came to the prices Akka was up to two hundred ponds cheaper on wooden chests and up to one hundred and fifty pounds cheaper on wooden beds.

I came away from there and another major high street retailer more determined to try and get our product higher up on Google and Bing’s rankings. This will then get our furniture in peoples minds and hopefully bedrooms.

Bigger is not always better where furniture is concerned.  Give the small retailer a look.