Heywood-Wakefield Chair Restoration

There is a particular kind of damage that is harder to fix than a broken joint or a scratched surface. It is the damage done by a well-meaning previous owner who looked at a beautiful piece of mid-century American furniture and decided it needed to be darker. In the end, professional Heywood-Wakefield chair restoration was needed to bring this American piece of classic to its glory.

This set of Heywood-Wakefield chairs arrived at our shop in exactly that condition. Underneath a heavy, non-original dark stain and dated floral upholstery was exactly what you would hope to find: solid birch frames in good structural condition, with the clean sculptural lines that make Heywood-Wakefield one of the most recognizable and collectible American furniture brands of the twentieth century.

• Full stripping of non-original dark stain from all wood surfaces
• Surface preparation and sanding appropriate to Heywood-Wakefield birch construction
• Full refinish to restore the warm, natural blonde tone characteristic of original factory finish
• Removal of original floral fabric and padding
• Custom reupholstery in a clean, modern blue fabric suited to the mid-century aesthetic

Heywood-Wakefield was an American furniture manufacturer with roots stretching back to the nineteenth century. The company became synonymous with mid-century modern design during the late 1930s through the 1960s, producing furniture in solid birch with the blonde and wheat finish tones that defined the look of postwar American interiors. The design sensibility was clean, low, and functional, influenced by Scandinavian modernism but with a distinctly American character.

The result was furniture that was built to last and designed to be beautiful, which is exactly why so much of it is still around and still worth restoring properly. Heywood-Wakefield pieces hold their value when their original character is preserved. The worst thing that can happen to one of these chairs is not age or wear. It is a well-intentioned refinish that buries the blonde grain under dark stain or covers the wood entirely in paint.

The first and most important step on this project was removing what did not belong.

The dark stain applied to these chairs at some point in their history was not a factory finish. Heywood-Wakefield’s signature aesthetic was built around light, warm, blonde birch, and the original finish systems the company used were designed to enhance that natural tone rather than mask it. A dark stain does the opposite: it obscures the grain character that makes birch distinctive and flattens the visual quality that collectors and design enthusiasts specifically seek out in these pieces.