How to Clean an Armchair and Dining Chairs

Chairs are cleaned less often than sofas and are usually dirtier, because the soiling on them is not obvious: it sits on the front edge of the seat and the top of the back, where hands and clothing touch. Wipe those two areas and a chair looks new without any deep cleaning at all.

What you need

• Upholstery shampoo or 1 teaspoon of washing-up liquid per litre
• Baking soda — for odours and grease
• Leather cleaner and conditioner — for leather and leatherette
• Isopropyl alcohol — for ink marks

• A vacuum with a narrow nozzle
• A soft brush
• Microfibre cloths, several
• A spray bottle

Time: 20 minutes per chair.

Step by step

1. Vacuum the joints. Where the seat meets the back, with the narrow nozzle: that is where crumbs and dust collect.
2. Check the label. The same W, S, WS and X codes as on a sofa. On dining chairs it is under the seat.
3. Test the product. On the underside of the seat, ten minutes, then check for a ring.
4. Work with foam. Whisk the solution and apply only the foam with a brush, so the padding stays dry.
5. Do the contact areas separately. The front edge of the seat and the top of the back get a second pass — that is where the dirt is.
6. Dry before use. Two to three hours. Sitting on a damp seat presses the moisture into the foam.

Method 2 — leather and leatherette

Neither takes water with detergent: it dries the surface and leatherette then cracks along the folds. A dedicated leather cleaner, then a conditioner two or three times a year — that is the whole routine. Ink comes off with isopropyl alcohol on a cotton bud, applied to the mark only and never rubbed across the surrounding leather.

Method 3 — an office chair

The mesh back is the easiest part: vacuum, then a barely damp cloth. The hard part is underneath — the gas lift and the castors, where hair and dust wind into a felt that stops the wheels turning. It is picked out by hand with scissors, once every six months, and it does more for the chair than any cleaning of the seat.

Method 4 — the frame and the fixings

Half the chairs thrown away are not worn out, only loose. The screws under the seat work free from a year of use, the joint starts to play, and the movement then breaks the wood for good. Turning a chair over and tightening four screws takes two minutes and is worth doing whenever you clean it — the cleaning is the moment the chair is upside down anyway.

What to avoid

• Soaking the seat. Foam padding holds water for days and starts to smell.
• Alcohol on fabric upholstery. It lightens dye and the patch shows more than the stain did.
• Ordinary detergent on leather. It strips the finish and the surface starts to crack.
• Cleaning a wooden frame with plenty of water. The joints loosen and the chair starts to wobble.

Why chairs are worth doing together

One chair takes twenty minutes, six take an hour and a half — the products are already mixed and your hand is in. Doing them one at a time as each gets dirty costs several times the total effort for the same result.

The same holds for the room: chairs, the armchair and the sofa are usually the same fabric with the same soiling, and cleaning one of them makes the rest look worse by comparison.

When to call a cleaner

Extraction cleaning of dining chairs costs UAH 199 each, an armchair UAH 450 and an office chair UAH 299. The minimum upholstery order is UAH 2,000, so chairs are nearly always booked alongside a sofa at UAH 1,299 — six chairs on their own do not reach the minimum, and it is fair to say so before the booking rather than after.

Frequently asked questions

How do I clean a fabric dining chair?

Foam from an upholstery shampoo with a brush, then blot dry. The seat must not be soaked.

What cleans a leather armchair?

A leather cleaner and a conditioner two or three times a year. Detergent dries the surface and it cracks.

How do I clean a mesh office chair?

Vacuum, then a barely damp cloth. And clear the hair out of the castors twice a year.