Which Furniture Fabric Is Best For Your Home Decor?

Furniture fabric is a great way to accentuate your pieces and to add life to a normal scene in your home. Reupholstering your furniture drastically shifts the colour balance, visual age, and style of your furniture without needing to buy new sets. Upholstery fabric is more affordable than buying entirely new pieces of furniture.

Furniture Fabric Choices

Upholstering immediately updates your home decor. But do you know which furniture fabric is best suited for your home decor, style, taste, budget and family?

Consider some of these furniture fabric options for your pieces.

Leather

Leather is one of the first choices that leaps into people’s mind when they’re thinking about upholstery, and it’s easy to see why. I know it is for me. I’m crazy about it!

Having been used for centuries, it’s a strong, pliable, and pleasant feeling material that can last for a lifetime if treated properly.

Not to mention the ease of clean, luxurious look, and modern appeal regardless of trends.

While its benefits are many, it does have drawbacks:

• it cracks or discolours after prolonged sun exposure, making it a of an less ideal choice as your favourite recliner
• sticks to your skin in hot weather and generally feels cold in winter

It suits darker colour schemes well around the house, and it carries an air of luxury with it. Use it sparingly for the best effect.

It’s kid-friendly unless they decide to take a marker or pen to it. Even then, there are protective products you can buy to safeguard against it or remove it when it happens.

Suede/Microfibre

Suede is a softer form of leather, with a napped finish.

This means that it doesn’t have the problem of sticking to you in the heat, but its total downside in comparison is susceptibility to stains, spills, marks and scratches.

While this doesn’t make it a more ideal material to work with, it does make it different in its potential applications. Suede armrests on a leather couch is a fairly common combination, or suede-covered chair seat in a dinner table set.

Ensure you treat it as instructed, and it will last for decades. I wouldn’t recommend this if you have small children though.

Corduroy

Corduroy is largely known for being the material that all unfashionable 70’s jackets are made of.

It actually forms a significant part of the furniture industry’s material choices, especially in higher-end furniture makers.

Corduroy is durable and, depending on the colour, resistant to stains and spills, making it a good choice for couches, recliners, and the like.

High-traffic furniture items are best upholstered in resistant fabrics, making corduroy a good choice for these things. It can be dyed to almost any shade, and suit almost any colour scheme.

This is  great option if you have small children and pets thanks to its practicality and durability.

Cotton

Cotton is a very common furniture fabric option thanks to its easy maintenance.

The majority of furniture has cotton as the primary fabric, because it’s cheap, tough, comfortable and soft.

Cotton is very good for all kinds of furniture. It can be dyed any colour you want, making it a good choice for general furniture items and colour coordination.

Its kid and pet friendliness give it a plus!

Linen

Linen has become very trendy in the last few years for furniture. It’s often used on headboards in neutral shades.

It has a very luxurious appeal especially in lighter colours. Linen is a natural fibre and absorbs colour very well.

Though it might be slightly more expensive than some of the more common options, it is comfortable and soft.

However, given it’s price point, with small kids and pets, it would be not the best furniture fabric choice.

Wool

Wool is a versatile and interesting furniture fabric to work with, because it has one very prominent benefit – it’s warm.

Made from sheep’s wool, it’s a great insulator, and, therefore, is very popular in colder climates for furniture items.

The downside to this natural, comfortable, and warm material is that it’s very hard to clean due to it’s more absorbent nature.

Nylon

Nylon is a synthetic material, and is highly resistant to staining and damage, but it does fade over time.

Some people prefer the feel of nylon over that of natural fibres. Being synthetic, nylon is usually available in any size and colour, and varying degrees of quality as well.

This makes nylon a better choice for a lower-cost fit-out of your home, and for longer-lasting upholstery.

The Gist of it

No matter the furniture fabric you choose, evaluate your home setting first:

• Are you seeking luxury?
• Do you want comfort?
• Does cost matter?
• Do you want low or high maintenance?
• What’s your colour scheme?
• What’s your home decor style?
• Do you have small children or pets?

Answering some of these basic questions will help you make wiser decisions in terms of determining what works best for your home, family and budget.


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This is Grace

Grace from Color & Grace. Based in Troy, Michigan, Grace is a 42 year-old petite woman who loves colours. Born and raised in China, she moved to America for love in 2007. Her day job – teacher. Her dream job – fashion blogger. Make sure to go and check out her blog and leave her a comment on her awesome outfit.

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