Choosing Materials for Dog Furniture
Part of this project is making something a dog can enjoy—mostly from the play aspect of it, but also an aesthetic aspect. Dogs can’t enjoy things visually like we do, but I want to make a sense that what the dog sees and what the human sees are equally aesthetically interesting.
Dogs don’t see like we do. It was thought they only saw in black and white for a while, but most people know now that they see blues and yellows. I saw some research that suggests they like different textures—in my experience this is true because my dog likes to roll around in interesting places (grass, fluffy carpet, leather sofa, textured bathmat, etc).
I put some fabric through this dog vision filter, which gives a decent idea of what they see (different colors, as well as slightly blurred vision; they “see” better through their nose).
I chose this first one just because I liked it, but from the dog perspective, it looks like a nonsense mess and they probably have no idea they’re meant to be flowers.
I decided a simpler, more geometric pattern might look better, but the end result looks a bit too plain and ugly for me. I was hoping the saturated colors would look better, but I don’t think dogs see saturation differences.
This is the pattern I decided on. I feel that compared the other two fabrics, this one maintains the same aesthetic value, and it looks to have a bit of a texture to it. The geometric-ish pattern still looks interesting despite being blurred. A houndstooth pattern means nothing to a dog—but it’s a subtle signifier this is an object for a dog.
I’ll be using “cocolok” matting for the upholstry—if the dog decides to tear the whole thing up, they can eat it no problem, unlike commonly used polyurethane foam. Furniture designer MARK has been using it in their new sofa; it’s basically the stuff at the bottom of floating plant pots.
