How to Choose the Right Upholstery for Your Sofa

When we’re looking to buy a sofa, we mainly check size, design, and color. At furniture stores, we sit and lie down on the samples to check their quality and how comfortable they are. Little do we realize that a sofa’s upholstery is really one of its most important elements.

Depending on how we plan to use our sofa, we need to choose a suitable upholstery. If we have children, pets or how carefully we ourselves live as well are all influencing factors. Whatever your home situation might be, choosing a good upholstery that adapts to your daily life will save you a lot of problems.

In our post today, we’ll share some advice on choosing the right upholstery for your sofa. If you choose the right one the first time around, you won’t have to clean it again and again, rotate its cushions or reupholster.

Choosing the right material

First off, you need to choose the material that’ll cover your sofa. You can find a wide variety of materials that all vary in quality and price. As we’ll explain further below, all of them have their pros and cons:

• Fabric. Fabric offers an endless list of options. You can choose from all sorts of colors and patterns, making the options available vast. Among the different kinds of fabric, you can find different levels of quality. If you’re planning on using your sofa a lot, you’re better off opting for a resistant, thicker fabric. Sofas that are upholstered with a thicker fabric are also always warm seating options. As for the price, the options are as varied as the fabric choices, so you can find one on any budget.
• Leather. Leather always adds elegance and class to a setting. These days, you can find leather in a variety of colors. It’s more expensive than fabric upholstery, but leather keeps better over the years. The biggest downside of leather, however, is that it’s a very cold material in winter, and a very hot one in the summer.

Which color upholstery should you choose?

The color is one of the hardest aspects to choose. It depends on two things: the main color palette in the room and how much you’re planning on using your sofa.

You should choose a color that matches with the rest of your living room unless you want it to really stand out. By choosing a color that fits into the existing palette, you can achieve harmony for your room.

If you have a small living room, we recommend looking for light colors. Light colors will bring in light, helping the room look bigger. If space isn’t an issue for you, then you’ll have no problem choosing darker tones.

Another option that’s related to colors is choosing contrasting patterns or tones. It’s an idea for our more daring readers that’ll help make their sofas really stand out.

Do you have children or pets?

Children climb into sofas and jump on them. Sometimes they spill things on them as well. Aside from shedding their hair, pets might not have the cleanest paws. In these kinds of situations, you have two options: yell non-stop to keep everyone from staining the sofa, or choose a darker color for your sofa.

As for the material, leather is the best option for these situations because it doesn’t stain and pet hair doesn’t stick. Leather means spending more, but in the long-run, it’s worth it.

If you end up going with fabric, anti-stain fabrics have become available in recent years and they offer very good results. They’re more expensive than convention fabric options, but they’re worth it because you can simply brush away stains or marks. Trying to remove a stain off a sofa with a normal fabric is a tough task.