When Janet Feldman set out in 2014 to find a recliner for her father, she was dispirited by the available offerings. “The chairs were horrifying,” Ms. Feldman said. “They were large and corduroy and plaid, with side pockets all the way down. They looked ridiculous.”

Ms. Feldman had identified a challenge in recliner design. To accommodate features like adjustable backs, footrests and levers, the chairs were typically bulky and pillowy with mechanisms that were often visible. Like the chair equivalents of minivans, recliners were the antithesis of style, a statement that their owners prioritized comfort over design.

But in recent years, all that has changed. Furniture companies have given recliners a much-needed makeover, responding to customer demand for chairs that are both comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. Contemporary recliners are “so much better-looking, slim and beautiful,” said the interior designer Young Huh, who recently ordered one for a client’s library. “When they are in the seated position, they look like normal chairs.”

Ms. Feldman was ahead of her time when, noticing the lack of elegant recliners, she resolved to create one herself. She knew that such blatant functionality of the available options wouldn’t work for her father, who’d spent his career in the shoe business. “My father didn’t want to seem infirm or be seen in one of these huge ugly chairs,” Ms. Feldman said. “He wanted a beautiful chair that would scale with the other furniture in the room.”

In 2014, she formed a company, Assistance With Elegance. After three years of research, she brought in Jessica Banks, an inventor, designer and roboticist. Ms. Feldman’s mission resonated with Ms. Banks, whose father, Seth Banks, formerly a manager of industrial design at GE HealthCare, had developed mobility issues.

Ms. Banks, who owns a kinetic furniture company, RockPaperRobot, and co-hosts the Netflix home renovation series “Hack My Home,” was similarly unimpressed with the recliner selection, particularly when it came to their designs. They were “undeserved focal points of rooms when they should have blended in,” Ms. Banks said.

This past April, after creating multiple iterations, Assistance With Elegance introduced the AWEchair, which retails for around $10,000. Like a souped-up first-class airplane seat, the recliner features a power lift mechanism, retractable footrest, lumbar and arm support and secure handholds.

Despite all its bells and whistles, the chair’s silhouette is sleek and structured. “It’s a beautiful design for a city apartment or country home and looks like a regular 1920s club chair, but with super-duper tech,” Ms. Feldman said.

Assistance With Elegance isn’t alone in this pursuit. Furniture manufacturers are turning out recliners in multiple styles, from “contemporary to traditional, coastal, bohemian, Scandi even,” said Veronica Londono Schnitzius, the president of the furniture company American Leather. They’re designing sleeker frames and discreetly integrating ergonomic and high-tech features like lumbar support, power-activated motion, heat, massage and the ability to charge electronic devices.

“Designers are striving for modern silhouettes that sacrifice nothing in comfort, and challenging the mechanism engineers to deliver the smoothest possible ‘ride’,” said Cameron Sellers, the vice president of marketing at Hooker Furniture.

Power recline mechanisms are often disguised underneath a chair’s frame. In another approach, though, the home interiors brand Serena & Lily employed kickback rather than lever mechanisms in its recliners because, according to Kirsty Williams, the company’s chief design officer, levers have long been a telltale sign of recliners. Now, she added, “the mechanisms and movement are a hidden secret.”

Subtlety defines these new chairs, which no longer force a choice between form and function. Mr. Banks, now 79, described his AWEchair as his “household cocoon” and “a place of safety, security, and comfort.” It’s where he reads, naps and completes seated exercises, he said.

Perhaps equally important, his recliner blends in with its surroundings. “The chair’s understated design elegance gave us the flexibility to place it in my favorite room without it being a reminder of my condition,” Mr. Banks said.