Patent Application
20230255352
The present invention relates generally to furniture pads, and, in particular, to reusable, non-adhesive furniture pads that protect flooring and prevent horizontal sliding.
A piece of furniture placed directly onto the floor is prone moving or sliding. Everyday activities such as sitting down, rocking, and reclining can dislodge furniture from its resting state, resulting in floor and wall damage such as scratches, dents, and chips as well as potential injury to users, especially among the disabled, elderly, and those holding babies. Furthermore, furniture must be readjusted or moved back into its intended position after each displacement, a common source of annoyance and back pain.
Many solutions to protect flooring and to prevent horizontal sliding have been put forth in the prior art. Some of these include:
Using area rugs as a buffer in between pieces of furniture and the floor. Rugs protect flooring but do not prevent furniture sliding because at least one of a rug-floor contact area and a rug-furniture contact area has insufficient surface roughness. The resulting furniture-rug-floor arrangement requires minimum effort to induce furniture sliding.
Using pads as a buffer in between pieces of furniture and the floor. Pads typically use an adhesive layer to grip the underside of chair and table legs. Such pads have several drawbacks. First, they do not offer adequate protection for larger, heavier furniture pieces that require a greater contact area with the floor. Second, they use materials that are not sufficiently thick, dense, or durable, causing permanent and uneven pad compression that may lead to furniture tilt. Third, the adhesive layer will wear, soil, and otherwise lose its viscosity over time, limiting pad reusability and causing the pads to eventually fall off.
What is needed is a pad that is adjustable, low maintenance, and effectively provides floor protection and anti-slip functionality for larger and heavier pieces of furniture. It is preferably made of a compressible material that is strong, durable, and rebounds after use. It must secure furniture without requiring an adhesive.
The present disclosure satisfies the foregoing needs by providing, inter alia, a reusable furniture pad for addressing each of the foregoing desirable traits as well as methods of its use.
One aspect of the present invention is directed at a reusable furniture pad that protects flooring and prevents furniture from sliding. The pad may be comprised of a pad body. The pad body may be made of an elastomeric material that rebounds after sustained compression. The elastomeric material is preferably closed cell Polyvinyl Chloride. The elastomeric material preferably has a short hardness of 10-20.
The pad body may by trimmable into any desired shape. The shape is preferably circular or an elongated rectangle. The edges of the furniture pad may extend 0.5 to 1.5 inches outwards from the edges of an associated furniture base. The furniture base may be sufficiently thick to allow for sufficient compression and indentation under the weight of the furniture piece. Preferred thicknesses are 1 to 4 inches and 0.25 to 0.5 inches.
The pad body may have a bottom surface configured to contact the floor and a top surface configured to receive a furniture base. The bottom and top surfaces may be textured to improve grip. The preferred texture is a lattice of grooves.
Receiving a furniture base may create a base-shaped indentation in the top surface of the furniture pad. The furniture base is firmly secured within this indentation, preventing horizontal motion of the furniture base relative to the furniture pad. The top surface of the pad body may have at least one indentation or at least one raised portion in order to firmly secure lighter furniture which may not be sufficiently heavy to create indentations in the pad body.
The foregoing summary, as well as the following detailed description of preferred variations of the invention, will be better understood when read in conjunction with the appended drawings. For the purpose of illustrating the invention, there is shown in the drawings variations that are presently preferred. It should be understood, however, that the invention is not limited to the precise arrangements shown. In the drawings, where:
Implementations of the present technology will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings, which are provided as illustrative examples so as to enable those skilled in the art to practice the technology. Notably, the figures and examples below are not meant to limit the scope of the present disclosure to any single implementation or implementations. Wherever convenient, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawings to refer to same or like parts.
Moreover, while variations described herein are primarily discussed in the context of furniture pads, it will be recognized by those of ordinary skill that the present disclosure is not so limited. In fact, the principles of the present disclosure described herein may be readily applied to prevent the sliding of other objects.
In the present specification, an implementation showing a singular component should not be considered limiting; rather, the disclosure is intended to encompass other implementations including a plurality of the same component, and vice-versa, unless explicitly stated otherwise herein. Further, the present disclosure encompasses present and future known equivalents to the components referred to herein by way of illustration.
It will be recognized that while certain aspects of the technology are described in terms of a specific sequence of steps of a method, these descriptions are only illustrative of the broader methods of the disclosure and may be modified as required by the particular application. Certain steps may be rendered unnecessary or optional under certain circumstances. Additionally, certain steps or functionality may be added to the disclosed implementations, or the order of performance of two or more steps permuted. All such variations are considered to be encompassed within the disclosure disclosed and claimed herein.
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It shall be noted that the term “furniture base,” as used throughout this document, includes any portion of a piece of furniture that, when used in its ordinary manner, comes in contact with flooring, for example, but not limited to, table legs, chair legs, sofa legs, recliner legs, cabinet bases, drawer bases, wardrobe bases, and the like.
The pad 100 may have any shape including, but not limited to, a circle, ring, strip, square, elongated rectangle, and the like. For example,
The pad 100 may have a top surface and a bottom surface. During use, the bottom surface may contact the floor and the top surface may receive a furniture base. In a preferred embodiment, such as that depicted in
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The table's light weight slightly compresses the portion of the pad 600 underneath the table leg 604, creating a shallow table-leg-shaped indentation. The indentation and raised portions 608 firmly secure the table leg 604 on all sides, preventing horizontal motion of the table leg 604 relative to the pad 600.
As the table leg 604 leaves the pad 600, the portion of the pad 600 underneath the table leg 604 rebounds, restoring the pad 600 to its original shape. The pad 600 can then be reused.
While the above detailed description has shown, described, and pointed out novel features of the disclosure as applied to various implementations, it will be understood that various omissions, substitutions, and changes in the form and details of the device or process illustrated may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the disclosure. The foregoing description is of the best mode presently contemplated of carrying out the principles of the disclosure. This description is in no way meant to be limiting, but rather should be taken as illustrative of the general principles of the technology. The scope of the disclosure should be determined with reference to the claims.
