A beautifully decorated dining room chair will help users feel more comfortable. Besides, the aesthetics of your dining chairs can sometimes help your guests feel more appetizing and have a more memorable experience in your dining room.
Therefore, decorating for dining chairs is essential, especially for old dining chairs after being used for a long time. People often recover them with fabric materials. So, what is the best fabric for dining chairs? Find out through the following items.
Best Upholstery Fabrics for Dining Room Chairs
Below, we will show you the six commonly used fabrics to cover dining chairs. We believe you will be able to find the one that best meets your needs.
1. Velvet
Velvet is a commonly used material for dining chair upholstery.
This upholstery fabric is used a lot because of its properties. They usually come in a variety of colors. Furthermore, this is a moderately priced fabric, suitable for many households.
Besides, velvet fabric often resists stains. If the material has messy wires, you can completely wash them and wrap them as they were.
This type of fabric also has significant advantages, such as high strength. So, they are very durable and deserve one of the best fabrics for dining chairs.
Moreover, when used, velvet fabric will bring a luxurious feeling to the whole room. Users will also feel comfortable when sitting on velvet seats.
This fabric is also available in 3 popular forms: cotton, mohair, or polyester, making it very convenient for users.
However, there are some notable disadvantages when using this fabric: they can cause adhesion when in contact with pet hair. Plus, you should not expose the velvet fabric to sunlight because it can damage the surface.
Pros
- Soft, pleasant, and comfortable
- Stain-resistant
- Create a luxurious style
- Variety of materials
Cons
- Easy to stick to pet hair
2. Tweed Fabric
Tweed is known as one of the natural fabrics made from durable wool fibers. When using tweed fabric to cover your dining room chairs, you can bring a sense of luxury and elegance to the room.
Although this fabric still possesses some valuable advantages such as being durable, resistant to dirt and does not create odors. However, when used, they still have some notable disadvantages, such as needing to clean often, sometimes making it difficult to clean.
Pros
- Good water resistance
- Stronger and more durable
- Various textures
- Sharp and sophisticated
Cons
- Hard to clean
3. Cotton Blend Fabric
Cotton blend fabric is a material known as a durable fiber and has an additional blend of nylon (sometimes polyester) synthetic fibers.
This type of fabric is generally durable and stain-resistant. The use of cotton blend fabric to reupholster your dining chairs will help them have a longer use time and limit stains.
The cotton blend also received a high rating for flatness. When using it, you don’t need to worry about the chair being wrinkled when sitting.
Moreover, this upholstery fabric is very breathable, so it will bring a cool and comfortable feeling to your dining chairs.
The seat cover with synthetic cotton helps increase the chair’s durability, avoiding external factors from abrasion. Besides, most synthetic cotton fabrics are diverse in color and design, so you don’t need to worry about your chair aesthetics.
However, this fabric still has some disadvantages that cause discomfort to users, such as: easy to absorb moisture, and it makes the stain stick firmly to the chair if it cannot be cleaned quickly after sticking.
Pros
- Durable and Long lifespan
- Cooler
- Cheaper price
Cons
- Easy to get moldy
4. Vinyl Fabric
Vinyl fabric is a great choice for dining room chairs placed in direct light environments.
Choosing this fabric for dining chair seats makes them difficult to fade. Plus, this fabric can resist stains from sticking to the seat surface.
With that said, using vinyl fabric offers many advantages for your dining chairs. The most prominent is the advantage of cleaning, durability. Also, this fabric is diverse in color and texture.
However, it has certain disadvantages. For example, they are very prone to cracking, and sometimes they can tear if you let them dry too much.
Pros
- Easy to clean
- More sustainable than real leather
- Lots of colors to choose
Cons
- Easy to crack if left to dry
5. Faux Suede
It can be said that this is an extremely suitable fabric when used to wrap household items, including dining chairs.
This fabric is synthetic but has a similar appearance to the leather. People often call them by the name fake suede. When using faux suede to recover, they often feel light and easy to clean. At the same time, this is also a fairly durable fabric over time.
The advantage of this fabric is, of course, the aesthetics and elegance that they bring. Besides, you can easily clean this fabric when dirt or stains stick to it. They are also very safe for many objects, including children.
One downside to using faux suede to cover your kitchen chairs is that it easily reveals uncleaned stains on the chair’s surface.
Pros
- More luxurious design
- Soft and attractive
- Easy to clean
- Suitable for families with young children
Cons
- Easy to collect dust
6. Leather Fabric
Leather is one of the best upholstery materials and is often used to cover dining room chairs in well-off households. The use of leather fabric brings many conveniences and aesthetics to the room. Depending on the user’s budget and needs, the leather fabric is divided into different levels (high price for genuine leather, and cheaper price for PU leather). They are generally aesthetically pleasing and highly durable.
The advantage of using leather fabrics is that they do not cause irritation to the user, and you can easily clean them if they get dirty. The use of leather fabrics as upholstery fabrics also helps to create a luxurious feeling for the dining room.
However, leather fabrics also have certain limitations, especially in the economy, because they are quite expensive. If you use leather fabric to cover the seats in a hot environment, they are also easy to make you feel sticky.
Pros
- Polite appearance
- Mix of modern and classic
- Easy to clean
Cons
- Expensive
How Many Yards Of Fabric Do You Need To Reupholster a Dining Chair?
Typically, a dining chair will typically measure around 16 x 18 inches. However, there are still many exceptions.
If you are really a gauger, you can get a glimpse and know the chair’s measurements. Then you can proceed to cut the fabric, recover the dining room chair right away.
However, if you are not a professional, it will take you a little time to determine the exact fabric size needed for a chair.
You still have to take a few basic measurements to know exactly how much fabric you need for a chair.
Use a ruler to measure the distance between the two edges of the chair to calculate the length and width. Also, it’s a good idea to add about 3 – 10 inches to each size to reserve for the fabric that will need to be folded and stapled during recovery.
Finally, use washable marking devices to mark the metric measurements on the fabric. You should keep on the reverse side of the material to avoid mistakes and increase the professionalism of the process.
How to Recover Dining Room Chairs
To reupholster your dining chairs, you need to go through a basic two-step process of preparing the upholstery and attaching the upholstery to the chair. To understand better, let’s take a closer look at the following two main ideas:
Prepare to wrap
- First, prepare some materials for the process, such as pens, wrapping cloth, sponge, scissors, screws, staples, and hard staples.
- For upholstered chairs, remove the seat cushion from the frame to prepare to reupholster it.
- Next, cut the foam to the size of the chair to be upholstered. Once you have the desired length of the foam, place the cut foam sheet on top of the wrapping cloth.
- If it is economical enough, you can leave the fabric as it is without measuring it before placing the foam on. However, people will usually count and cut the material to the right size for the front seat.
- Then, cut the fabric to the size of the pre-marked upholstery on the fabric.
- Finally, use the cut fabric as a template to miss the next sheets.
Attach the upholstery to the chair
- Once you have the right upholstery fabrics, secure them tightly and pin the fabric in places around the seat cushions.
- Next, attach the fabric carefully and make sure they are completely secure without loosening when using it.
- Then, fit the upholstered seat cushion on top of the chair to become the finished chair.
- Double-check the surface of the seat cushions to make sure they have been reupholstered in a durable way.
Conclusion
Attractive dining chairs are indispensable for a splendid dining room. Whether you are looking to buy a new set of chairs for your dining room or kitchen, or a little more complicated to reupholstering your old chairs, knowing what type of fabric is best for them is essential.
With our list of the best fabrics for dining room chairs, you’re sure to be able to find initial suggestions on what you need. You can also combine it with the other information and instructions in this article to help reupholster your chairs yourself.
