Decoration
How to Spring Clean Your Upholsteries
If you want your home to keep that luxurious, glossy finish, your upholstery will need the odd spring clean. Click here to find out how to do it.
How to Spring Clean Your Upholsteries
Owning a gorgeous, cream sofa set can easily provide an elegance to your living room space, but it also brings with it a certain amount of stress. For any household, upholstery fabric is a prime target for dirt and germs, which is why it’s important to apply a spring clean as often as you can.
This is especially true if you favour linen or cotton fabrics. We adore both linen and cotton for their ability to create a sophisticated, relaxed, and sustainable look to a home. Complete with gorgeous designs and decorative lighting, they can be the perfect finishing touch. But because they’re so beautiful, there’s a greater incentive to keep them clean and avoid any dirt from damaging the fabric itself.
How to Know When to Clean
When it comes to your linen or cotton upholstery, the spring cleaning process should be fairly simple. Firstly, it’s important to know the difference between upholstery that needs a clean and upholstery that is just going through the natural phases of its lifetime.
Creased upholstery, for instance, will occur due to the naturalness of the material. This isn’t something to worry about. If anything, it adds to the charm and character of the upholstery, and shouldn’t be considered a flaw. Darker textured upholstery, similarly, will show no tell-tale signs that a clean is needed. This is why it’s important to formulate a fixed schedule – cleaning your upholstery at least once every two weeks, no matter how it looks to the naked eye.
Spring Cleaning for Linen and Cotton Upholsteries
For both upholstery, vacuuming can help to prevent small particles from embedding themselves in the weave. You should look to remove unfixed cushions and vacuum along all the seams – all the places where dust or crumbs could gather – and use a furniture brush to remove any pet hair.
For any liquid stains, we would offer a separate guide for linen, Make sure to use a clean, damp cloth – no soap! – and don’t scrub the cloth or grind it into the stain. We know how horrible it can be to discover a stain on your beautiful, new sofa, but grinding the cloth will only make it harder to clean – not to mention it can do more damage to the fabric than what’s been done already. Instead, simply dab the cloth gently and steadily lift the stain out. The same goes for darker upholstery.
For cotton upholstery, it’s a little different. While just a few drops of water and persistence should be applied to linen fabric, you can combine both clean water and a few drops of distilled white vinegar to your cotton. The solution needs to be mixed thoroughly before transferring to a spray bottle, and it should be sprayed lightly on the affected area. Once again, do not rub the cloth into the fabric. Simply blot over and over again, until you can start to make out a difference.
When to Re-Upholster
If you have old, well-loved pieces of upholstery that are verging on the wrong side of ‘traditional’, then spring cleaning might be pie in the sky. Instead, you could look at reupholstering. This doesn’t mean you have to get rid of the upholstery altogether, of course. These traditional fabrics are part of our home. In many cases, they’re a part of our hearts, so it isn’t as easy as throwing them out and applying something new.
Instead, look to see if you can get your upholstery properly dry-cleaned. In many cases, a hoover, brush and water are not enough to make the upholstery glimmer again, and that’s when it should be turned over to a professional. Before doing so, take a look and see if you can spot any labels – that will give you a good idea of whether it’s safe to dry-clean – or speak to your local dry cleaners face-to-face.
If a dry cleaner can’t work its magic on it, then it might be time to reupholster. While you might gasp in horror at your antique sofa set being reupholstered, professional reupholstering services can allow you to recreate the original piece, making it look more beautiful than ever. It can also be a good opportunity to let your imagination soar a little, moving away from the original style of the antique fabric and choosing something that fits more delicately inside your home. It’s your choice! But in the meantime, we’d recommend sticking to this regular spring-cleaning routine, ensuring that your upholstery remains as opulent as the household it lives in.
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