Your beloved couch or chair is a part of your home’s personality. Treating should be personalized and safe no matter what. Still, trying to clean upholstery when you’re dealing with a ton of diverse fabrics and sensitivities can be a time-consuming challenge for any homeowner. Whether you’re trying to with an urgent stain, daily maintenance, or a specific Upholstery Cleaning challenge, here are a few extra tips to help the process go down a bit more smoothly.
Leather
Depending on how it’s been processed, leather can be one of the most low-maintenance types of fabric to treat, or an extremely sensitive and hard to clean material. If you have a couch or chair made from processed leather, it might only need a wipe with a paper towel or a bit of scraping with a dull knife to get a stain out successfully. However, if the leather you’re working with is a bit more porous, you’ll want to tread lightly. Leather can be extremely sensitive to water depending on its treatment. Using extreme caution, try spot cleaning with a specific treatment formulated for leather before calling in a professional to help.
Natural Upholstery
If one of your furniture pieces is made of 100% cotton, wool, silk, or any other type of unmixed fabric, it’s known as natural upholstery. This means that it has to be treated with extreme care and caution to avoid staining. As with most upholstery, you’ll want to test the spot treatment you use before applying it straight to your fabric. Since natural fabrics can react badly to specific treatments, read the care instructions provided to see what to avoid. In general, using household spot treatments like bleach pens or even dish soap can be a bad idea. Try to stick to extremely gentle and neutral cleaners in extremely small doses. Some fabrics will only be able to be steam-cleaned, such as silk. In this case, you’ll need to bring your piece in for a professional cleaning.
Combined Upholstery
Combined upholstery refers to anything that’s mixed together, such as a poly-wool blend. This type of upholstery is typically less sensitive and easier to treat. However, paying attention to detail is still the best way to go. Since many combined fabrics are prone to shrinking or warping with heat, you’ll want to make sure you don’t put anything in the dryer unless the care label recommends it. If you’re at all in doubt, consult a professional or bring your upholstery in for a professional cleaning.
Microfiber Upholstery
Since microfiber is extremely low-maintenance and formulated to keep dirt and stains on the surface, cleaning this type of upholstery is less of a challenge. Stains are protected from sinking below the surface by a tightly-knit weave of fibers, keeping any spills or spots easily manageable for cleaning. Like leather, you might want to use a butter knife or blunt object to scrape stains off and wipe the rest with a paper towel. For bigger spills and stains, bring out the handheld vacuum and try to gather up the scraped-up materials.
