You just got your furniture freshly reupholstered, and you love how it accents the rest of the room. Maybe you’re looking for some new fabric and want to know the maintenance level involved?
Or maybe you’ve had that fabric for a while, and it’s so familiar it’s a source of comfort. Then you drop a bowl of chocolate ice cream on it. Now that fabric is a source of uncertainty: mainly in how you clean it. After all, you can’t very well hang your furniture out on a clothesline.
Luckily, it’s fairly easy to understand how to clean different types of fabrics. Fabrics carry codes set up by the Joint Industry Fabrics Standards Committee, which tell you how to clean the fabric. The designations are below:
DC-Dry Cleaning Only
S-Spot cleaning only with a water-free dry cleaning solvent. Never use water or saturate; if you are cleaning a spill, blot immediately to remove excess spilled substance
W/S-Spot clean with an upholstery shampoo, foam from mild detergent, or a mild dry cleaning solvent; Do not Saturate
W-Spot clean only with water based shampoo or foam upholstery cleaner; Do not oversaturate or use solvents to spot clean; Blot immediately to remove any spilled material
X-Clean only by vacuuming or light brushing with a nonmetallic, stiff bristle brush; Do not use water or solvent based cleaner
Though to be safe, always pretest the designated cleaning method on a hidden part of the fabric.
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