The Intention of Women-Owned Businesses
March is Women's History Month, a time when women are culturally celebrated and recognized for their contributions. To honor and promote awareness of women’s accomplishments, we must take an honest look throughout history. Women have always had to find nontraditional ways to break through the patriarchal systems that many industries are built upon, and at SoftFrame Designs® we proudly align with that untraditional approach and origin story.
Heidi Petzold, Founder of SoftFrame Designs®:
“I have never been interested in following the status quo, especially when it comes to furniture. For generations, the way things were made did not always serve women well, and many of those norms felt limiting. I have always resisted systems that feel confining or inflexible, and that mindset shaped how I approached building SoftFrame.”
Furniture has historically been a male-dominated space, largely because it revolves around power tools, heavy materials, and construction processes that many women have been discouraged from engaging with. Alternatively, history books have typically depicted women at work with textiles and finishing details. This oversight has proven to be flawed, as a woman’s perspective can offer an entirely different set of priorities and possibilities when it comes to furniture.
SoftFrame® was created to rethink what furniture can be. As evidenced by our customer reviews, our successful satisfaction rates serve as a rebuttal to the fallacy that a female founder’s leadership is a miscalculation of trust. We are, and have always been, a company dedicated to the vision of designing with intention. We choose ease over rigidity, and create pieces that feel supportive, beautiful, and grounded in real life.
What “Designing for Real Life” Means
Interior design has become overly complicated in recent years, which seems a bit shortsighted. Real life is complicated enough, isn’t it? Rather than amplify complexity, interior design should introduce a sense of ease. Real life is about balance. There will always be challenging moments for us to power through, but struggle does not need to be the thematic throughline of our lives.
“Ease is one of the most underrated design principles. I’ve always believed that good design should support how we actually live, not how we think we’re supposed to live.”
Heidi Petzold, Founder of SoftFrame Designs®
So what does it mean to design for real life? Essentially, it means accepting imperfection as part of the human condition and working with it, not against it. Using furniture to offset the residual guilt we carry from self-defined “failures” in life is not an effective strategy. If disappointments and regrets could be erased by sleeping in a museum, we would all live inside The Met.
Our circumstances are constantly changing, and our spaces should be able to not only move with us as we navigate those changes, but also make those changes feel less abrupt or sharp. At SoftFrame®, we have created bed frames with sharpness erased from their vocabulary. All of our products are handcrafted in California with 100% CertiPUR-US® certified foam, the highest-quality foam in the industry, and finished with resilient, soft-touch fabrics.
We offer three bed frame styles:
- The Ultra Bed Frame is our most popular design. It’s made with 5-inch thick CertiPUR-US® certified foam, making it our most plush collection.
- The Luna Bed Frame offers a bold, curvaceous design that contrasts the angles of our Classic and Ultra styles. Using 3.5-inch thick CertiPUR-US® certified foam, this style falls right in the middle when it comes to size and softness.
- The Classic Bed Frame is a minimalist’s dream. This is our most space-savvy design, using 2.5-inch thick CertiPUR-US® certified foam.
Thoughtful Living Goes Beyond Aesthetics
Femininity is often misunderstood as a preoccupation with aesthetics. While feeling beautiful can certainly be included in the list of joys women experience, it is far from being the end-all-be-all. If you’ve ever taken a holistic yoga class, you’ve likely been taught about the Divine Feminine, which represents our source of creativity and intuition. When accurately examined, the legacy of women’s achievements throughout history has always championed intuition, renewal, and emotional presence over physical beauty.
Thoughtfulness when it comes to design is all about considering the function of a piece of furniture and the way it makes us feel. In other words: thoughtfulness goes hand in hand with intuition, renewal, and emotional presence. It isn’t necessarily about choosing between minimalism or maximalism. It’s about intentionality. A woman’s perspective helps in this case, as it points toward the practical benefit of softness and relaxation over rigidity and friction.
Heidi Petzold, Founder of SoftFrame Designs®:
I believe furniture should support your life, not hurt you. Just because we have been using wood to make bed frames for thousands of years does not mean it is the only way forward. With SoftFrame, I wanted to challenge that assumption and take advantage of modern materials that allow for more ease, safety, and care for both people and the planet, while still maintaining a classic, natural bedroom aesthetic.
Intentional Spaces Support Daily Routines and Transitions
Our products support daily routines and transitions primarily because they suit the way people live today. Reading, lounging, and working from bed are normal parts of daily life. These contemporary activities aren’t reflected much in historical interiors.
At SoftFrame, we’ve designed a collection of headboards and pillows which allow you to sit up in bed comfortably. These products provide a soft, cushioned surface to lean back against. Similar to the bed frames they complement, our headboards are crafted with high-density CertiPUR-US® certified foam, up to 5 inches thick, wrapped in resilient fabric for long-lasting comfort. If your bed sits against a wall, a headboard or bolster pillow can prevent the marks, scuffs, and scratches caused by the movements of everyday life.
Modern Home Design Balances Beauty with Practicality
Heidi Petzold, Founder of SoftFrame Designs®:
“Women are the ones buying our products, and I love the idea of someone feeling empowered knowing they can set up a beautiful bed frame on their own.”
Undeniably, our products are beautiful. However, while beauty matters to a certain extent, we understand the importance of maintaining a balance between beauty and practicality. SoftFrame® bed frames and headboards arrive fully assembled and ready to use. The setup is designed with ease in mind: simply place the bed frame over and around your box spring (required and not included) and then slide the headboard in between the wall and the bed frame. No movers, no tools, no complicated assembly. Just a quick & efficient setup that doesn’t hurt your body or your toes.
To learn more, check out our How It Works page.
A Founder’s Perspective: Designing from Lived Experience, Not Trends
Trends come and go, but the need for comfort never will. That need isn't hard to meet, either. Subtle design choices can make all the difference. As a result of often being overlooked, women throughout history have had to learn to maneuver the delicate language of subtlety by paying attention to the intricate details of what people silently need, not just what they say they want.
We recently spoke about the return of comfort-first design being a cultural shift toward spaces that feel genuine and calm rather than rigid or ornamental. Comfort-first design might be trending, but the appeal has always been significant. The design world shifts toward new shapes and color palettes every few years, but the desire for safety and ease is timeless. Designing from lived experience, through the lens of women, prioritizes those desires first and foremost.
Design with Purpose Creates Longer-Lasting, Meaningful Homes
Heidi Petzold, Founder of SoftFrame Designs®:
“Design with purpose means asking how something will feel five years from now, not just today.”
In Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés said: “Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.”
At SoftFrame Designs®, we are always looking toward the bigger picture with a female founder’s approach centered around nurturing softness as our strength, not our weakness. We consider growth, sustainability, and sincerity with every choice we make. They say life is short, but life is actually the longest thing we do. To fashion our homes in the ways we deserve, we must first consider what we want our homes to say about the way we fashion our lives.