Recliner Chairs: How to Choose the Right One This Spring

A good recliner chair comes down to four things: a solid frame, dense foam that holds its shape, a reclining mechanism built to last, and a cover, leather or fabric, that suits how you live. Get those right and the chair supports you comfortably for years; get them wrong and you're left with a seat that sags, squeaks, or gives out at the mechanism.

Below, we walk through the types of recliner on offer, how to tell a well-made one from a cheap one, whether leather or fabric is the better call, how to get the size and comfort right for your body and your room, and what it costs to buy well. Where it helps, there's a real Adore Home Living piece to show what each point looks like in practice.

If you're weighing one up as an early-spring treat or a Father's Day gift (Australians spent about $720 million on Father's Day in 2025, at an average of $145 a buyer), it's worth knowing that a recliner is a considered purchase, not a grab-off-the-shelf one. Take the time to get it right.

What kinds of recliner chairs are there?

Recliners split two ways: how they move, and how many people they seat. On movement, you're choosing between manual (you push back against the chair, or pull a lever, to recline) and electric (a motor reclines the chair at the touch of a button, often with a separate powered headrest). On size, you're choosing between a single recliner armchair and a reclining sofa or suite where two or more seats recline.

Manual recliners cost less and have no motor to fail, but you need a bit of body strength to work them and to get back up.
Electric recliners stop and hold at any angle, and a powered headrest lets you adjust neck support independently, genuinely easier if getting in and out of a low seat is a struggle. The trade-off is a motor and electrics that need looking after.

For a single spot to sink into, the Edwards Electric Recliner Armchair is a straightforward electric single: it reclines by motor, has a powered headrest, and adds cup holders in the arms and LED lighting beneath the frame. It's part of Adore's Recliner Chairs in Perth range, and the same model is available as a three-seater if you want the chair and a matching lounge to move together. If you're not sure which format suits your room, Adore's own guide to picking the right lounge is a useful starting point.

What makes a recliner good quality — and how do I spot one that will last?

Quality lives in three places you can't see from the showroom floor: the frame, the foam, and the reclining mechanism. A recliner that looks identical to another can be built very differently underneath, and that's what decides whether it's still comfortable in five years.

Here's what to ask about, and why:

The frame. Look for solid timber rather than all particle board. Most Adore recliner frames are made of solid "timber and composites", a timber structure with engineered board where it's under less load. The Edwards chairs use the zig-zag steel springs and webbing (the S-shaped springs strung across the seat base) that give a lounge its give; the leather suites like the Como and Paterson use pocket springs, individually wrapped coil springs that support you point by point and hold their shape.
The foam. Most of these recliners list a "foam and fibre" filling in their specs, but not all foam is equal. The single most useful number is foam density, how much the foam weighs for its size. Higher density holds its shape and support far longer, and it's a better predictor of long-term comfort than how soft a cushion feels on day one. Ask for the density figure; a soft-but-low-density cushion is the one that flattens first.
The mechanism. This is the part that moves thousands of times, so it's the part most likely to fail. An independent durability mark such as an AFRDI Blue Tick (awarded after real load, fatigue and stability testing rather than a showroom eyeball) is worth hunting for on any seat the whole household drops onto daily.

One concrete signal of how a maker rates its own build is the warranty. Adore Home Living warrants its lounge frames for 10 years, the "motion components on all recliners" (the reclining mechanism itself) for 2 years, and the electrical parts (motors, batteries, transformers, LED lighting and power hubs) for 12 months. That tells you that Adore's products are built to last.

Should I choose a leather or fabric recliner?

Choose fabric if you want warmth underfoot, more colour choice and a lower price; choose leather if you want a surface that wipes clean and ages well. The catch is that both words hide a range of quality, so it pays to read the label closely. Adore's own leather versus fabric rundown is a good companion to this section.

Reading a leather label

"Leather" is not one material. Full-grain and top-grain are the real thing, the intact or lightly sanded outer hide, durable and long-lasting. Bonded leather, by contrast, is leather scraps ground up and glued back together with binders; under the international leather standard, bonded material isn't classed as leather at all, and on a chair it can peel within a few years.

You can see the difference in Adore's own range. The Como, Paterson and Palermo suites are all described as full cowhide (genuine cattle-hide leather), the Paterson specifically as "premium thick cowhide." The Benson chaise, by comparison, is a "combination of leather and leatherette", real leather where your body touches it, synthetic leather elsewhere to keep the price down. Neither is wrong; you just want to know which you're buying. Adore's guide to leather labels goes further if you want the full vocabulary.

Reading a fabric label

For fabric, the number that matters isn't a headline rub-count on the tag. Australia grades upholstery under AS 2687, which rates fabric across cleanability, strength, colourfastness and abrasion and assigns one of five duty grades from Delicate up to Commercial Heavy Duty. Ask which duty grade a fabric carries. It tells you more about a busy family room than a big "rubs" figure does. The Edwards chairs use a fabric Adore calls Rhino, which it describes as durable, soft and easy to clean.

If you have pets

This one's not niche: 73% of Australian households now have a pet, including nearly half with a dog. Full-grain leather resists claws and wipes down; a tightly woven, higher-duty-grade fabric handles fur better than a loose weave. Whichever you pick, plan to clean it. Adore's care guide suggests treating leather with a leather cleaner 6–12 times a year and deep-cleaning fabric twice a year, and it sells the Guardsman leather and fabric care ranges for exactly that. Its leather care guide covers the routine.

One WA note on placement

Wherever you place it, make sure to keep it out of direct sunlight. Summer in Perth delivers some of Australia's most extreme UV, and that strong, sustained light fades both leather and fabric over time. A spot away from a north-facing window, or UV-filtering blinds, will help slow fading.

Will it fit me and my room?

A recliner "fits" on two levels: it has to suit your body, and it has to physically get into and sit in your room. Both are easy to check before you buy, and both are commonly skipped.

Fitting your body comes down to seat depth and seat height. Seat depth is the one most people overlook: in a controlled study, a seat that was too deep or too shallow made the lower back work 28–33% harder than a well-matched one. Aim for a seat roughly the distance from your lower back to the back of your knees, deep enough to use the backrest, not so deep the front edge digs into your calves. Seat height matters too: feet flat on the floor, knees level, no dangling and no pressure behind the thigh. This is where a powered recliner earns its keep: being able to stop at any angle, and adjust the headrest, lets you fine-tune support rather than settle for one fixed position. Adore's piece on how a recliner system supports your back explains why the angle does the work.

Fitting your room is a two-part measure:

The space it will live in. Reclining seats need clearance behind (for the backrest) and in front (for the footrest). For a compact room, a suite built for smaller spaces makes more sense than squeezing in a big one. The Como Leather Recliner Lounge Suite is designed exactly for that, pairing a three-seater with two single recliners in a footprint that suits a cosy living room. It's worth sanity-checking against your actual room: a typical new Western Australian house runs about 223 m², a new townhouse about 154 m², so scale the piece to the space you really have.
The path to get there. Measure every doorway, hallway and turn between the front door and the room. In newer homes built to the livable-housing standard, internal doorways are at least 820 mm wide and corridors at least 1,000 mm, useful benchmarks, but measure yours. Adore notes that customers are responsible for making sure furniture fits through doorways, hallways and staircases, so this check is on you before delivery day.

How much do recliner chairs cost, and how do I buy with confidence?

Across Adore's current range, a single electric recliner armchair starts at $990, a fabric reclining suite at around $2,690, and full-leather electric suites run from roughly $3,990 to $7,290. Where you land depends on manual versus electric, fabric versus leather, and one seat versus a suite.

A rough guide from the current range:

Edwards Electric Recliner Armchair: $990 (RRP $1,490). A single electric recliner with powered headrest; the pick if you want one chair to sink into.
Lawrence Fabric Recliner Suite: $2,690 (RRP $3,890). A three-seater recliner plus two reclining armchairs in a soft, suede-like fabric; manual, with an electric upgrade available for a fee.
Benson 4.5 Seater Electric Recliner Chaise Sofa: $2,690 (RRP $3,490). Electric reclining with an extended chaise to stretch out on, in a leather-and-leatherette cover.
Palermo Electric Recliner Suite: from $6,090 (RRP from $7,890). Full thick cowhide leather, powered headrests, built-in lighting and a home-theatre set-up; the premium end.

A few of these (the Como, Benson, Paterson and Palermo among them) currently sit in Adore's Spring Sale 2026 range at prices below their usual RRP. Adore Members Club members get a minimum of 15% off RRP as well, so the shelf price isn't always the final one. (Prices, discounts and promotions here are correct at time of publication and may change.)

Buying well is as much about your protections as the price:

Your rights don't expire with the warranty. A retailer's warranty is a bonus on top of your legal consumer guarantees, not a replacement for them. A durable item like a recliner must be of acceptable quality even after the stated warranty ends.
A major fault is your call. If something goes seriously wrong, you, not the store, choose a refund or a replacement, and a "no refunds" sign can't override that.
A delivery date is a commitment. A business must deliver within the agreed or a reasonable time. Adore delivers across Perth metro with its own team, usually within 2–6 business days after processing, worth confirming against your own date if timing matters.
Taking your time is normal. Most Australian shoppers now research and compare before committing rather than buying on impulse, sensible on a piece you'll sit in every day.

Your next steps

Measure twice: the space the recliner will occupy (with the footrest out and the back reclined), and the full path from the front door to the room.
Decide manual or electric, leather or fabric using the trade-offs above, and note the questions to ask: foam density, the fabric's AS 2687 duty grade or the leather grade, and what's covered by the warranty.
Sit in it before you buy. No spec sheet tells you whether the seat depth suits your body. Only sitting does.

That last step is the one you can't do online, and it's where a showroom earns its place. Adore Home Living (a Western Australian family business founded in 2015 by Cindy and Lawrence, and a designer and direct importer of its own range) keeps its recliners on the floor across its WA showrooms, so you can compare a manual against an electric, and fabric against full cowhide, in one visit. The pieces in this article sit within the Recliner Chairs in Perth and Spring Sale 2026 ranges. If you'd like a hand fitting a recliner to a particular room, Adore's Design Services offers an in-home consultation for a $199 fee that's deductible against purchases over $2,000, or you can talk it through by phone on 1300 000 887 before you visit.