Good To Know: Designing Custom Upholstery
My custom upholstered couch on move in day.
For many of our projects, the pieces of furniture that are the most asked about are often custom pieces. We absolutely love the unique qualities and tailor made nature of custom furniture, and we try to incorporate custom pieces into all of our projects. Today for Good to Know, we’re going to talk all things custom upholstery, including why it might be the right fit for you, how to design it, and the best fabrics to use.
There are many reasons that you might be wanting a custom piece of furniture for your home. Maybe you have something very specific in mind, and you haven’t been able to find anything like it. You might want a piece of furniture that perfectly fits the space that you have. Perhaps you have to work around something odd in a room in your home. For example, in my family room I wanted a sofa that followed the line of the whole room, but I had a hallway on one side that a traditional sofa would have blocked off. I needed a sofa that wasn’t as deep as a normal sofa, so as not to block off that hallway. However, it also needed to have a tighter back, so that the back cushions wouldn’t take up as much of the seating space. I couldn’t find anything that fit these specifications, so I designed exactly what I needed. Here’s how I did it:
How to Create Custom Furniture for your Home:
Step 1: Consider your needs
The first step is essentially to go through the bolded items above. Think about what you are trying to solve by having a piece of furniture custom upholstered. Consider the space that you have, and what kind of furniture you would like to fill it. Conduct thorough research and make sure that what you are looking for is not already being manufactured. Custom pieces are typically more expensive than a ready to purchase alternative, so you’ll want to make sure that what you’re looking for doesn’t already exist.
Step 2: Find something similar
Once you have a good idea of what you want, and know that it doesn’t already exist, we recommend that you go shopping.We do not recommend just trying to design a piece of furniture outright. There are a lot of different dimensions and stylistic features to take into account with furniture design, and that can be really difficult for people who are doing this for the first time. However, we do recommend finding something that’s as similar as possible to what you are looking for. So, go online or to a showroom and look for pieces of furniture that are close to your dream piece. It’s a good idea to prioritize pieces that are stylistically close to what you were looking for, and that primarily need adjustments for size. The details are truly what create the style of an upholstered piece, so it will be easier to recreate that style if you find something that is already nailing most of the details.
Step 3: Figure out what you need to Customize
The primary benefit of step 2 is that it provides a template for what you want to change. You don’t have to start from scratch and try to figure out all of the dimensions yourself. Instead, you can take the similar piece, and then tweak the measurements, fabric, or foam to your exact specifications. Consider what you want to change from the piece that you liked. If you like the seat, find out what it’s filled with and what type of foam it has. Finding a template for what you need makes figuring out your customizations so much simpler than just starting from scratch.
Some key measurements to keep in mind for upholstered furniture are:
The Overall Depth of the piece
The Overall Height of the piece
The Seat Height (from the floor)
The Arm Height (from the floor)
The Arm Width
The Seating Depth (and what seating depth you’re comfortable with)
When working to customize your piece, you should also be thinking about the other inner components, including types of filling and foam. Investing in high-quality inner components can help ensure that your piece lasts for many years, so you’ll want to go as high quality as your budget will allow. The inner components of your upholstery also affect the overall look of the piece. Consider whether you want to down-wrap your foam or just have straight foam for your cushions. A wrapped foam will give your upholstery a fluffier look overall, and can therefore be more casual. For my sofa, I chose to go without down-wrapping, as I wanted a more sleek and tailored look.
Step 4: Find an upholsterer to work with
As much as we can talk about this process from our design experience, the truth is that we are not upholsterers. Ask around and do research online to find a high quality upholsterer that is local to you, and communicate with them about your project early on. They might have specific needs that are unique to their process, or insight on what you specifically want to do, so it’s a good idea to find an upholsterer that you like as soon as possible. If you’re local to Utah, we highly recommend Markell’s Upholstery.
STEp 5: Pick your Fabric
This step is one of the most important, and is the place where you should be doing a lot of research. The fabric content of your custom upholstery is vital to the overall look and feel of the piece, and is not the place to cut costs. In our blog post about soapstone countertops, we talked about the idea that there is not a 100% perfect countertop, and the same is true with upholstery fabrics. The good thing is, there are a lot of fabric choices out there, and a ton of information is available online to help you find the best fit for you and your family.
When choosing a fabric, the most important things are to do research and consider your needs. The best fabric for you will look very different depending on whether you have kids or pets (or both), and these factors need to be considered before you commit to anything. Just as with countertops, keep in mind that what works for someone else might not be the best fit for you, which is why research is so important. For example, if children or slobbery pets are a concern, look for a fabric that is highly stain resistant. If you’re a retiree without young children in your home, you can get away with less stain resistant fabrics, like linen.
Above all, we highly recommend that you prioritize durable fabrics. It doesn’t matter if the sofa is beautiful; if the fabric doesn’t last, the sofa won’t last. We recommend staying away from fabric with a loose weave, unprotected leather, suede, or silk. All of these materials will not be durable enough for long-term use, and you’ll likely have to spend more money down the line having your piece re-upholstered. Also, if pets are a concern, avoid fabric that uses a Rep-Truss weave (pets love to scratch it). Side note, one of the best pet fabrics, particularly if you have cats, happens to be velvet. Although pet fur sticks to it, cat claws can’t catch on the fabric, making it more scratch resistant.
The only way that we recommend using a less durable fabric is for a piece of furniture that is not going to get a lot of use. Something like a headboard or a bedroom settee that are not going to take a lot of wear are where we would utilize something more delicate, like silk.
The good news is that there are a lot of fabrics that are durable, and that we often recommend for custom upholstery. These include high-end polyester, Sunbrella fabric (good for indoors and outdoors), microfiber or ultra-suede, and velvet. We also find fabric blends to be very durable and great choices for upholstered pieces. My custom sofa is a wool / polyester blend, and we have used cotton / polyester and velvet /polyester blends as well. If you don’t have to worry about kids and pets, the upholstery options are much more open, including fabric like linen or wool. Linen is very durable, but if you use it in a lighter color, it’s not particularly stain resistant.
Before you choose a fabric, consider what will be required to keep it in good condition and how it may age over time. In our experience, polyester blends are especially durable, and fabrics that have a bit of a texture to them (like velvet), are more wipeable and easy to clean. If you go with a treated leather upholstery, consider that it will patina and change in appearance over time. You can also always choose a more durable fabric for the upholstery, and a less durable fabric for pillows, which are much more easily replaced. If you are particularly concerned about wear and tear, it might be the right decision for you to get a slip-cover over your furniture. That way, you can have the fabric of the piece itself be very durable, and you can more easily switch out the slip cover as needed.
One other important thing to consider when picking a fabric is the shape of your piece. If your piece is curved at all, you’ll want to pick a solid colored fabric. Once a piece of fabric has been cut up and reconstructed on an ornate shape, a pattern will not hold up as well as on the bolt.
As far as color goes, if you’re picking fabric for a sofa, choose a rich toned solid or classic neutral color. This goes along with our advice for any large piece in your home. For the main components in a space, choose from a palette of neutral or classic colors.You can choose bolder fabrics for smaller pieces like an ottoman or a statement chair, but custom sofas are expensive, and choosing something that is more neutral will help ensure that you won’t tire of it after a few years. Also, before you commit to a fabric, make sure that all of the textures, colors, and patterns work well together in your space.
If you love a fabric, but aren’t sure how it will look on your piece, go back to the template idea that we talked about earlier. Take a large swatch of your potential fabric to whatever showroom has your inspiration piece. You can drape the fabric over it to get a better idea of what the final piece will look like before you sign off on it.
Overall, we highly recommend investing in custom furniture for your home. Although it is typically more expensive than pre-manufactured furniture, it pays off in the long run to have a piece of furniture that is 100% specified to your needs. As you undergo this process, ask every question that you have, do research, and potentially hire a designer to help. This is a big investment, and we want to help you be completely satisfied with it!
To hear more about the custom upholstery process, click here: