Upholstery

How’s that chair in your living room doing? Outdated? The dog’s favourite place to nap? Far more shredded than your cat’s perfectly unblemished cat tree? Thought so. It’s a common story – it’s hard to teach pets (or your kids… or your partner… or your friends) that furniture needs to be treated with care, respect, or even just common courtesy. You aren’t the only one who has had to fish the popcorn kernels, rawhide dog treats, and cat toys out of a couch! Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that it’s always the best, most comfortable, favorite chair or couch that gets the most “love” (read: the most damage), and it is thus the chair or couch that you want to part with the least.

Don’t despair. There is a way to get a new chair or couch without actually having to spend the money or time finding that perfect new one. Instead, re-upholster it!

Why an ordinary fabric store won’t do

Your pets, family members, or friends have already proven that the one thing your furniture’s fabric needs is strength and integrity. That means not just any type of fabric will hold up against all of the demands that are going to be put on your favorite couch or chair. In other words, you need to re-upholster your chair with a fabric that can hold its own, and you’ll find it by shopping the upholstery fabrics that are for sale at upholstery fabric stores.

The difference in quality

Upholstery fabrics, for sale at upholstery fabric stores, are fabrics that are specifically designed for furniture. They are often canvas fabrics that are a little stiffer and a lot stronger than your ordinary fabrics. Trust me, if your couch didn’t hold up to your cat in its original form, there is no way a jacket-grade faux leather or suit knit will hold up to those claws. You need tough fabrics, and you need them to come in patterns and colors that are going to be as muted or as eye-catching as your chair needs to be to suit the room.

Why choose a fabric store over a furniture store?

There are a lot of reasons for why you might want to re-upholster your chair or couch rather than visit a furniture store to pick out a whole new piece. For one thing, the piece you are working on might be a specialty item, which means you might not be able to get another one, and you certainly won’t be able to get it customized to what you want. For instance, you are going to need to check out the upholstery fabric for sale at those upholstery fabric stores if you are restoring a classic car seat or an antique piece of furniture. In these cases, the value is not in the newness, it’s in the ability to make that antique item look like new, preserving its strength, utility, and its unique characteristics.

However, you don’t just need to shop for upholstery fabric for sale because you are working on a restoration project. It is also expensive to purchase new furniture every time the cat decides to vent her frustrations on your favorite chair, and the new furniture that gets made and mass produced in today’s furniture market can’t hold a candle to the quality and charm of some of those older pieces. Your savings make re-upholstering your chair well worth the effort, plus you’ll be able to get a unique piece of furniture that looks exactly the way you want, no matter how vibrant, muted, or gothic, classic or contemporary your color palette is.

Get your furniture the way you want it by shopping for upholstery fabrics at Swanky Fabrics.