The beauty of fabric upholstered soft furnishings comes from the beautifully designed prints, texture and types of fabric materials. By placing a Bohemian design fabric sofa in the living room can immediately create a luxury touch to the entire room décor. A bright red microfiber couch creates a sexy mood in a bedroom.
While they are a beauty to the sight and soft to the touch, fabric upholstered furniture require dedicated maintenance if you want to keep them for longer period, especially if the upholstery comes with a heavy price tag!
Below are suggestions to guide fabric upholstery owners to maintain their furniture.
1. Beware of what is on your body when using the upholstered furniture
Most of the time, our body will be in contact with the fabric upholstery, e.g. dining chair, sofa, etc. To minimise unnecessary stain, do not bring along items that can potentially cause staining, e.g. pen, marker, lipstick, nail polish, coffee, etc.
2. Applying Fabric Guard
While staining is almost impossible to prevent especially for commonly used upholstered furniture like dining chairs because they are used at the main dining area, good quality fabric guard can be applied to minimise staining. Fabric guards available in the market are not universal friendly, meaning you would need to check if the fabric protector is suitable to be applied on the material used for your soft furnishing. If in doubt, it is best to contact your furniture retailer for advice.
3. Minimise contact from high risk users
If you do not want to have your sofa covered by fur from your pets or urinated cushion by your newly toilet trained toddler, then you would need to find ways to prevent them from climbing up on your upholstery without you knowing.
While pet hairs do not cause stains, they are unsightly and nuisance to the next user who sits on the “hairy” sofa as the animal hair tend to stick on fabric garment. Urine from pets and children are also accidents you want to avoid as much as possible because not only the stains are unsightly, the odour coming from dried urine are totally unpleasant.
4. Most important reminder: Regular vacuuming and cleaning!
Because fabric is air permeable, this upholstery type unfortunately collects huge amount of dust, fine dirt particles, dead skin and micro organism. So even if they are not used regularly, they are still collecting dust daily which will cause health hazard to the next user if he/she is allergic to dust.
Dusty upholstery not only can cause health hazard, accumulated dust in the sofa can make the fabric looks dull over time. Regular vacuuming using a good quality vacuum machine with high grade filtration system should be used weekly to rid the dust in your upholstered soft furnishings.
When stains occur, do not panic. Immediately get a piece of clean cloth or kitchen towel and press on the excess stains as much as you can. If stain is formed, blot it with clean water and little drop of dishwashing detergent and blot again with clean water to rinse. Dry the damp spot immediately with fan or hair dryer, turned to cool mode.
Engage reputable upholstery cleaning service at least once a year to refresh the fabric and rid embedded dust and dirt particles within. Professional upholstery cleaners have a range of stain removal products to equip them with the right tool to remove stains effectively. If you have stained your sofa and if stains can’t be removed, a professional sofa cleaning service should be engaged immediately.
