Teddy Upholstered Rocking Chair Review: A Fun Statement Chair

When I saw the Teddy Upholstered Rocking Chair, I thought it might be the perfect “special” piece of furniture to make a room interesting.

I had never thought that we’d go for a rocker in our living room. We both pictured having a mid-century modern armchair, and we weren’t sure what color. When the opportunity arose to try out this upholstered chair (I chose to get it in yellow), I was excited to see how it paired with our sofa.

In this review, learn about my honest opinions on the comfort, quality and the unique assembly experience. For a simple chair, there is a lot to discuss!

What I like

I like a few of the main features of this teddy rocking chair. Basically, I think the “pocket” on the right side armrest is nice. It fits some small or flat things like a phone. Actually, this would have been a great feature for my upstairs rocking chair to have, because I spent many hours siting with the baby in that chair and I didn’t have a place to put my phone!

I like the wooden rocking legs, and I like the overall simplistic and mostly timeless design of this chair. It’s why I chose it to be our ‘statement chair’ in the living room, as we designed what we wanted, for the first time.

What I don’t like

I’ll get more into the quality below, but I feel like the texture of the fabric in the upholstery is a dab lacking. It’s a little too slippery for my liking.

I also don’t like that when I rock forward and backward in in this chair, it’s kind of a bumpy ride. It’s not 100% smooth. I feel like there’s a slight hiccup when I rock forward.

Lastly, I think the chair is a little too low in its height. I would have preferred a chair I didn’t sink as far into. I think a few more inches in height would’ve been an ideal size for most people who are going to use this chair.

Assembly

The assembly for the teddy rocking chair was not as straightforward as we thought. In summary, the chair doesn’t have so many parts, and it came with fewer pieces than, say, a desk chair.

The biggest whammy for us was that the rocker legs really seemed like they did not fit in the metal base brackets. And I mean that they really did not seem like they were going to fit. The angle looked like it was so far from fitting in the angle of the brackets that it looked like a manufacturing error.

Unboxing the product

In these photos, you can see how much comes assembled from what we unpacked in the box that arrived. The seat and seatback comes in two parts, and the rocking legs and the frame come wrapped in bubble wrap. There’s an instruction booklet, screws and Allen wrenches.

Experience with setup and building it

The top of the chair and the bottom of the chair screwed in fairly easily. However, Dan couldn’t get the top and the bottom to actually tighten. This seemed to be a point of weakness; Dan’s suggestion is to use superglue in case it falls apart in the future.

It was to Dan’s surprise that the holes did not seem to line up. What ended up happening was, Dan “barely” tightened the bolts once he put them into the two metal frames that go into the seat. He didn’t tighten them much. He spread them apart, and got the holes to match up in the frame.

It really looked like it wouldn’t fit, but once he tightened the bolts, the “tab” on the bottom started to become flush with the base of the chair.

It actually made it REALLY tight and sturdy, so that was the positive. This made it so that the bottom couldn’t possibly wobble, because of all the tightness in the bottom of the legs and the base of the chair. We were kind of like, “Wow.”

The fortunate thing is that the directions are sort of like IKEA instructions, and they have some words. The unfortunate thing is that the translations look like they were run through a translator from Chinese to English, so the grammar is pretty bad and some of the sentences don’t make sense. We had to get creative, and there was room for improvement.

Comfort

The one surprising thing about this rocking chair is that when I sit down in it, it’s kind of like my body expects it to be deeper and higher to the ground. So, that’s a funny thing: that I think, based on my body’s natural assumption of how tall a chair should be, I kind of fell into the chair the first time I sat in it.

The other thing is that the arm design is a little low. This means that my body also naturally would “expect” the armrests to be a big higher. When I sit in the chair, it feels a little shallow. This is probably because I have another rocking chair (a “glider”) upstairs in our house, and it has high arm rests and a big, deep seat.

Amid these surprises, once I sit in the our teddy rocking chair, it’s pretty comfortable. The seat back is tall, and the rocking feels natural.

Quality

I think the chair is exactly what you’d expect for the price: it’s a statement chair that comes in some nice colors and looks a little more interesting than a traditional upholstered chair. If you want to find budget home furniture, it’s one of the products that’s under $200 no matter which vendor you get it from, on AMazon.

Given this, the quality is the following:

• The wooden curved rocker legs look nice — it’s a better look than MDF, for example. I think the wooden rocking legs is my favorite aspect.
• The metal frame looks fine, and it’s a smooth black matte finish. It’s what I would expect.
• The upholstered “teddy velvet” is where I think the product falls short. This is the same type of fabric that a teddy jacket would be made of. It’s kind of a slippery polyester. It looks nice from afar, but up close, it’s far from luxury.

Is this chair a good buy?

Overall, I’m happy with this chair so far. When I’ve sent photos of our living room design to some friends, they’ve been impressed with the colorful “statement” that this rocking chair makes. I’m enjoying how the dusty yellow goes with our Flexispot velvet green couch.

I will say, as a conclusion, that the Teddy Rocking Chair was an easy answer to our need for a corner chair in our living room. There are a lot of types of chairs out there, and getting a colorful chair is a daring move. I think choosing the rocking chair in yellow was a fun decision for us, and so far, we are pleased with how the chair looks among our furniture.

The only thing I would caution against is if you want to buy this chair and you’re assuming a very simple setup, like an IKEA product. This chair required some creativity and some confusion when we built it.

I think that’s the biggest disclaimer: that the instructions don’t tell the full story of what you need to do when you assemble the rocking chair. And I think that is where the product falls short.

How to get one

If you’re interested in learning more about this rocking chair or buying it for your home, head to this chair on Amazon, Wayfair, Target (this version has a foot rest) or Walmart.

We’d like to thank Flexispot for providing us with the Teddy Upholstered Chair mentioned above; while the company has sent us the product as a gift, all thoughts in our reviews and content are our own.