No matter how carefully you treat your nice, upholstered furniture, the day will come when they will look a bit worse for wear. A few tips and tricks, however, can help you along the way to extending the life of your upholstered pieces.
1. Vacuum your cushions and upholstered surfaces regularly — about every week. Soil, dirt and dust can settle into textiles and wear them down gradually. Vacuuming will drastically elongate the life of your upholstery.
2. While you're vacuuming, remember to rotate cushions. Most sofa cushions are reversible now, and can sometimes even be repositioned on the sofa as well as just being flipped. Doing so allows the wear to be spread evenly, and you can avoid deep divets in the furniture.
3. If you have pets (and allow them on the furniture), make sure that you remove pet hair and dander with a lint brush or rubber dish glove. Pet hair acts the same as dust and dirt and can wear out upholstery over time.
4. Watch where you position your furniture in a sunny room or make sure to close blinds, as damaging sun rays can affect the textile quality of your upholstery, and also fade color over time.
5. As soon as you buy a new furniture piece, do research on the upholstery to find out what sorts of preventative products can be used on the fabric (such as Scotch Guard) and pre-treat to prevent stains after spills.
6. Have upholstery professionally cleaned periodically. This will tighten fibers, remove all sorts of dust, dirt and mites (ick!), and lengthen the life of upholstery.
Got some tips? Please share in the comments!
(Image: Caroline's Elegant Simplicity Small Cool 2011 Entry)
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We bought a C&B Petrie sofa in WHITE which is notorious for showing dirt quickly. I did lots of research on fabric protectors and decided to forgo the Scotchgard in favor of 303 Fabric Guard. Apparently the stuff is used on boat fabrics to protect from dirt, liquid and sun. It's been 5 months now and the sofa still looks brand new!
http://www.303products.com/shop303/index.cfm/category/66/303-high-tech-fabric-guard.cfm
"divots".
Make everybody wash their gol-durn hands?
I had such noble goals to vacuum and rotate my new couch when I bought it in January. I rotated cushions for a couple of weeks, and vacuumed never. I'm almost afraid to vacuum it, what if I disturb the fabric?.
"Sorry, you'll have to wash your hands before you sit on my sofa."
"Okay, bye."
Great advice. Thanks for the helpful tips! And maybe I ought to leave my upholstered chairs for the living room and simply get metal cafe chairs for the dining area. So many fewer stains would have to be dealt with then.
Cavale, my first thought was that people should have clean hands, too---but not as in "go wash your hands before you sit down". More like, if your hands are grubby, don't be touching those armrests, thank you very much.
I say this because I lived with someone for a long time who would eat chips or popcorn and wipe his hand on the sofa arm after every third or fourth handful. Seriously, he did. I do not live with him anymore.
Also, kids' hands can be amazingly dirty when they come in from playing.
lovely fabric on the windows! Anyone have a source? Even something similar.
Antimacassars for hard-used couches are a must.
A friend has them on her couch and it's saved them from her husband who likes to sit down immediately after a day of work, grubby hands or not. When she has company over, she can just whip them off and her couch looks like new.
My boss's couch does not have them and the arms are so grubby and actually have holes from coworkers worrying a loose thread and then picking at the resulting hole. Awful.
If your couch doesn't come with them, buy some extra fabric or an extra pillow and have them made.
My Ultimate thrift shop find was a wing chair that actually is a recliner! It was a beautiful shade of green with beautiful cherry wood feet. Now I am ashamed to look at it. I do have oily skin and the strong California sun makes it look like something that should be on the street! :-( I've bought at least $150 worth of fabric to cover it but keep changing my mind about what color and texture I want. Needless to say, it will never again be exposed to the hot,bleaching sun! I keep postponing because I don't really want to take on "re-upholstering" and a slipcover is not an easy option because the seat pillow does not come out, and the arms are arc shaped. Oh, well, it will be a major headache, but I know it will be worth it. And I definitely will make a cover for the top of the chair and armrest area! Is that what an antimacassars are?
Old European country houses often have slipcovers, or blankets tucked over cushions, or cushions covered in a different fabric. It's not for minimalists, but it works.