What Does Offgassing Mean? | Atelier Maison & Co.

The Sign on Our Warehouse

If you’ve visited our detached warehouse, you’ve probably seen the sign that says “Offgassing” and wondered what it actually means. It’s one of the most common questions customers ask us, and it deserves a real answer, not just a one-line explanation.

You already know the smell I’m talking about, even if you’ve never had a name for it. That “new car smell” everyone talks about isn’t a pleasant feature, it’s actually a warning sign. What you’re smelling is offgassing, chemicals releasing into the air from materials, adhesives, and finishes as they cure and break down over time. It’s the same phenomenon with furniture. New furniture can carry the exact same kind of chemical release, and depending on what it’s made of, that offgassing can be genuinely harmful to your health.

How We Handle It at Atelier Maison & Co.

Most furniture on the market is built with inexpensive materials, and a lot of those materials rely on glues and adhesives containing chemicals that can affect your central nervous system, and in some cases, are linked to cancer. That’s not a scare tactic, it’s just the reality of how a lot of furniture is manufactured to hit a price point.

At Atelier Maison & Co., we carefully source everything we sell with this in mind. If a client wants something completely nontoxic, we can source that specifically for them. For everything else, we follow a chain of custody that prioritizes low-VOC materials, meaning low volatile organic compound emissions, across most of what we carry.

Even with careful sourcing, though, furniture still arrives wrapped in plastic and cardboard, which traps whatever offgassing is happening during shipping. Because of that, every piece that comes into our warehouse gets unwrapped and inspected, and then it sits, unwrapped, for a minimum of seven days before it’s ever brought into the showroom or delivered to a customer’s home. That waiting period gives the piece time to release the bulk of its initial offgassing in our space, not yours.

The Blue Sofa

I had a conversation not long ago that stuck with me, and it happened somewhere I didn’t expect. I was setting up dumpster service for our new store, and the customer service rep asked what we’d be selling. I explained that we focus on heirloom quality and low-VOC furniture, because most furniture today is genuinely toxic. She stopped me and said, “Oh, you mean like my blue sofa?”

I asked her what she meant. She told me that every evening, she and her family would sit on that sofa and watch an hour of TV together. And every single time, by the end of that hour, they’d get up with a headache. It didn’t take her long to put it together. The headaches were coming from the chemicals in the sofa itself.

That’s not an isolated story, and it’s exactly why this matters to me beyond the business. A stranger on a phone call had already connected the dots herself, without ever hearing the word offgassing, because her body was telling her something was wrong every single night. Most people never make that connection. They just live with the headache.

What Nontoxic Furniture Actually Looks Like

For clients who want to go further than low-VOC and eliminate as much toxic exposure as possible, here’s what I actually look for.

Frame and Base Materials

Solid hardwood, like oak, walnut, or maple, and solid bamboo are the safest choices for frames and bases. Engineered woods like MDF, plywood, and particleboard commonly use adhesives containing urea-formaldehyde, which is a known carcinogen. If engineered wood is unavoidable, look for CARB2 compliance, which is a California standard that limits formaldehyde emissions. Metal and glass, including powder-coated steel, recycled aluminum, tempered glass, and natural stone, are naturally zero-VOC and don’t require chemical treatment at all.

Cushioning and Fill

Natural latex, made from the sap of rubber trees, is the gold standard for nontoxic cushions and mattresses. It’s naturally dust-mite resistant and doesn’t require chemical flame retardants. Standard polyurethane foam, by contrast, is highly flammable and has historically been treated with toxic flame retardants to compensate.

Upholstery and Textiles

Natural fibers like organic cotton, linen, hemp, and wool are the safer choice for upholstery. Wool in particular is valuable because it acts as a natural, chemical-free fire barrier on its own. Any wood stains, paints, or lacquers should be explicitly labeled zero-VOC or water-based, or use natural options like linseed or tung oil.

Certifications Worth Trusting

Terms like “eco-friendly” and “green” aren’t regulated, so they don’t tell you much on their own. What actually matters are independent, third-party certifications. Here are the ones we trust.

GREENGUARD Gold means a product has been tested in a chamber for emissions of over 10,000 chemicals, and the Gold standard is strict enough to be used in schools and healthcare facilities. It’s the best certification to look for on whole pieces of furniture, cribs, and mattresses.

GOTS, the Global Organic Textile Standard, is the gold standard for fabrics. It requires a textile to be at least 95 percent organic and verifies the entire supply chain was free of toxic dyes, bleaches, and finishes. Look for it on upholstery, bedding, and pillows.

GOLS, the Global Organic Latex Standard, ensures latex is over 95 percent organic and tests the finished product for heavy metals, VOCs, and pesticides. This is the one to check for cushions and mattresses.

OEKO-TEX Standard 100 tests finished fabric for over 1,000 harmful substances, including heavy metals, toxic dyes, and formaldehyde, and applies specifically to upholstery fabrics.

MADE SAFE is one of the strictest certifications available. It screens products against an extensive database of known toxic chemicals, endocrine disruptors, and carcinogens, and is especially relevant for mattresses, bedding, and smaller furniture items.

FSC, the Forest Stewardship Council certification, isn’t a toxicity standard, but it guarantees solid wood was harvested from responsibly managed forests rather than illegally logged or clear-cut. Look for it on wood frames, tables, and case goods.

CertiPUR-US applies specifically to polyurethane foam. It ensures the foam was made without ozone depleters, heavy metals, formaldehyde, and certain flame retardants, and has low VOC emissions. It still allows synthetic foam, but it’s the safest version of that foam you’ll find. This is the one to check on couches and foam mattresses.

What You Can Do Right Now

If you’re not in a position to replace every piece of furniture you own, there’s good news. Existing furniture has typically already gone through most of its offgassing cycle, so what’s already in your home is usually far less of a concern than what you’re about to bring in new.

Before buying something new, the sniff test is a genuinely useful first step. If a piece has a strong chemical smell in the showroom, that’s a real signal, not just an unpleasant scent. It’s also worth knowing that offgassing cycles vary enormously by product. Some pieces finish releasing chemicals within a week. Others continue for years.

If replacing everything at once isn’t realistic financially, we always recommend upgrading one piece at a time rather than doing nothing. Start with whatever you spend the most time near, like a mattress or a primary sofa, and work outward from there as your budget allows.

Why This Became Personal for Us

This isn’t just a business talking point for us. Years ago, as we became more aware of toxicity in the building environment, we started removing toxins from our building specifications and material selections. Our goal became delivering homes to clients with literally no chemical smell at move-in.

We built our first certified home with that goal in mind, and lived in it ourselves for seven years. When we eventually sold it, we discovered it had a dangerous level of radon, something we hadn’t tested for and weren’t aware of. Radon is the leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. That discovery changed how we thought about indoor air quality entirely. We realized we didn’t know what we didn’t know, and we needed to dig much deeper than we had.

From there, we started building homes with no chemical smell and a built-in radon mitigation system. But we quickly realized there was still a gap. We could deliver a home with clean, tested air, and then a client would move in furniture that was actively offgassing into that same tightly sealed building envelope, undoing a large part of what we’d worked to build. That’s the moment we knew this couldn’t just be a construction problem. It had to include what people actually furnish their homes with, which is exactly why we take offgassing as seriously as we do.

Bring Home Furniture You Don’t Have to Worry About

If you want furniture that’s been inspected, aired out, and sourced with your health in mind, come see us at Atelier Maison & Co. Whether you want fully nontoxic, certified pieces or simply want to understand what you’re bringing into your home, we can walk you through exactly what’s in front of you before you buy it.