So many adages come to mind on this topic: They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Buy the best you can afford and you will only cry once. It’s true that the quality in upholstery construction has declined over time, and though reupholstery is an investment, it can be an excellent value. Of course we also love that keeping your pieces means fewer items in the landfill!
In this Minneapolis project, the clients were staying in their home of 30 years. Because they worked with a professional designer decades ago, their pieces were scaled appropriately for the house and high quality. We determined that they were great candidates to refresh with new fabrics (and updated foam, batting, down, and webbing!)
Living Room Chair
An occasional chair like this should be able to float wherever you need it in the room. We took our fabric palette from the original fireplace tiles, to tie in to a permanent aspect of the room.
Living Room Game Chairs
We added a game table zone in the front of the room, and purchased a vintage table and set of Gustavian chairs. We had the table painted and the chairs touched up. Here the reupholstery was more of a restoration. The old seat had no padding and a simple fabric tucked under a board. We built the seats properly with foam and dacron, and covered them in a beautiful Pierre Frey velvet print!
Living Room Pair of Chairs
These English-arm tight back armchairs are an utter classic. We relocated them from the breakfast nook to the living room and gave them a fresh take in a pretty patterned linen. The original stripe was fun, but I like how the non-linear pattern subtly changes the proportion and creates a wider effect.
Living Room Sofa
The underlying principal of this project was to breathe fresh air into the home. With the sofa, we lost the skirt to add breathing room, and whitewashed the new legs to help lift the brown color off the light rug. While the original fabric was all one color, it had a sort of embossed pattern to it. We simplified further by using a straightforward linen and highlighted the lines with a brown welt in a different texture.
Dining Room Chairs
In the dining room we took a similar approach, where the new fabric is a solid, not a tonal pattern. In this case we used the cool blue to contrast the dark wood, celebrating the shape of the traditional dining set. Again we used a more casual, natural fabric — in this case a cotton twill — to play down the formality of the pieces.