Cleaning/Washing Cushion Fabric

[Tony and Rhonda]

I've searched the forums with @Wayfinder's great search tool/page and only found one hit on cleaning the fabric/upholstery in the Oliver (from John Davies). He machine washed his fabric.

We have the brown woven fabric in our 2017.

Does anyone have any advice for cleaning the fabric?

Thanks in advance.

Tony

[jd1923]

16 minutes ago, Tony and Rhonda said:

We have the brown woven fabric in our 2017.

Does anyone have any advice for cleaning the fabric?

We had the same fabric in our 2016. Thought to replace rather than clean. The fabric was worn fuzzy too, not just dirty.

They unzip so could be put in the washing machine. They could get more fuzzy and the stains may not come out. Air dry so not to shrink.

For $500 we have not only new Sunbrella fabric, but new 5" dense foam (was 4") and a nice new RED color (fabric comes in many colors). And they are much more comfortable! 🤣

Edited Friday at 05:13 PM by jd1923

[Tony and Rhonda]

Hi @jd1923, Our fabric is in generally good shape, no stains and not fuzzy (on the outside at least) but as far as we know they've never been cleaned. They also have an odd feel to the fabric so we'd like to clean them.

[jd1923]

18 minutes ago, jd1923 said:

They unzip so could be put in the washing machine. They could get more fuzzy and the stains may not come out. Air dry so not to shrink.

@Tony and Rhonda yours do look to be in better shape than ours were. The original fabric seemed good quality.

You could try the machine wash. Use a long pre-soak, then the gentle cycle.

Another thought would be professional dry cleaning. If you have a good local cleaners, take a seat back cushion there and ask their opinion. And maybe they can be dry-cleaned without removing the covers.

Let us know how it turns out! 

[FloraFauna]

6 hours ago, jd1923 said:

And they are much more comfortable! 

The originals are uncomfortable and i have considered replacing for that reason alone.  Ours look a bit too good yet for me to spring for it.  Pass the ketchup, please. 😉

[Tony and Rhonda]

We decided to wash the cushion covers. Unfortunately there are no care instructions in any of the covers we've checked. Oliver didn't have any guidance either. We started machine washing our cushion upholstery covers. Washing in a front loader on delicate/cold with second rinse. Adding regular laundry detergent and oxiclean. The upholstery fabric is synthetic and comes out of the washer almost dry. A few hours in the sun (air drying) finishes them. We also turn them inside out at some point to make sure they dry completely. We would not attempt machine drying.

The washed cushion covers look the same (no discoloration) as before washing but they smell better. Not sure if the upholstery had some type of stain treatment but the washed covers feel better too. The edge piping also had a little fraying after washing but we clipped or melted the frays. (Nylon or polyester fabric so you have to be very careful if you try to melt the frays.)

Freshly washed on left with a pile of removed frays at bottom.

Piping fray after washing, before repair.

The most difficult part is removing and reinstalling the foam from the covers. The covers are a very tight fit and the zipper opening is smaller still. The smaller the cushion, the more difficult. We have a standard bed and the small cushions used in the corners were a challenge. Strong hands are useful.

We found when removing the covers, our foam had stuck to the seams of the covers in some places. Not sure why this happens. We found it's best to run my hand along the fabric seams to separate the foam from the fabric. There are also a lot of fabric strings on the inside of the cover from the fraying seal allowance so we have to be careful not to pull on those when removing the foam.

After drying, we cut off a lot the frayed fabric strings to make it easier to reinstall the foam. Getting the foam past the zipper can be difficult. We found that squeezing the corner of the foam with one hand and pulling the fabric end over the foam worked best for us. Strong hands are very helpful here. Once the foam is inside to cover we had to stick an arm between the cover and the foam to help position the foam, especially in the corners.

We're working through the cushions a washer load at a time. The covers take up a lot of space in the washer when dry but not nearly as much when we so we started with four small covers by themselves and we're working up the number and size of the covers we wash at one time. We also plan each wash so there's no confusion on which cover goes on which block of foam.