"Pottery Barn Smell"

I recently received a spate of e-mails from new parents asking me what I knew about the smell emanating from their newly purchased Pottery Barn crib or changing table or dresser or whatever. In some cases, the smell was so overpowering, they couldn't stay in the room very long. My heart sank when I received these e-mails. Despite having beautifully designed furniture and giving me five minutes every few months to fantasize about the perfect interior design scheme in my hectic and often messy household, Pottery Barn continues to use components in its furniture that are not human-friendly. They have gone to great length, you may notice if you get their catalog, to talk about their commitment to "eco-friendly" practices and materials, but I have seen nothing that qualifies as "eco-friendly" (an undefined, completely unregulated term, by the way) in their products besides organic cotton and "sustainably harvested" wood. They still utilize particleboard in their products, which contains urea-formaldehyde--luckily California passed a law a couple years ago regulating the amount of formaldehyde off-gassing in particleboard, and my understanding is that Pottery Barn has complied. But I fear the smell that is causing all the headaches may be coming from the stain used on this furniture. The VOC levels in stain has not, to my knowledge, yet been regulated. A low-VOC stain would be a truly "eco-friendly" approach to take by Pottery Barn, but I fear we aren't there yet.

I post this in case you've stumbled upon this blog by searching Pottery Barn smell (many of my visitors do). We can't pinpoint with absolutely certainty what this smell is, though I suspect it is a high-VOC stain, paint, or even the particleboard itself if there is enough of it in the furniture you purchased. I recommend leaving these pieces in a well-ventilated space (basement with open windows, garage, your back yard) for two weeks, minimum, to get the worst of the smell out of the furniture. Another route for particleboard is to use SafeSeal (search this blog under SafeSeal and find some posts about the product). This isn't feasible with stain-related issues. Finally, this is so crucial: write a letter of complaint to Pottery Barn! The more people who do this, the more of a shot we have of getting them to begin using safer products. And don't be pacified. They may shoot back some form letter that talks about their eco-friendly this or eco-friendly that, or that they follow the California requirements for off-gassing in particleboard. The point is that you have a smelly piece of furniture in your house that is making things unpleasant, that perhaps this is going in a nursery, where your child will sleep, and that this is unacceptable. I guarantee that if enough people write, you will see some change.

In the meantime, those of us who want to stay away from high-VOC stains, particleboard, etc., but are on a budget, have to look elsewhere, and for the time being, it seems our choices are aesthetically limited. Ikea has a number of total hardwood furniture products, including beds. One thing I've done is purchased a night table for my son that was completely unfinished beech, and stained it myself with ultra low-VOC stain, purchased at a natural home store. I've done this with a number of items in my house, because I don't love the look of unfinished wood but I am not bringing a high-VOC stained item into my son's room. Good luck!!