Upholstery Spot-Treating Tips

"New Couch" by Reed Wiedower is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

We all have our accident-prone moments, from spilling red wine on the white couch or dropping a pen on the good furniture. When these tiny accidents happen, you don’t need to call in a professional cleaning company or try to use your stain-remover pen. Just follow these steps from Apartment Therapy and you will be on your way to stain-free upholstery!

Vacuum: Upholstery should be vacuumed frequently to keep the fabric in good shape and prevent dust and crumbs from settling into the body of the furniture. In the case of an old stain, it's surprising how much a simple vacuuming can help the fade the stain. It should always be the first step in dealing with this kind of damage, you don't really know what you're dealing with, or how bad the stain truly is until all of the loose particles have been sucked away by the vacuum.

Assess: Check your furniture for its cleaning codes. This gets you on the right track of how to best tackle your stain. Some pieces can be cleaned with water, others will require moving directly into various solvents. If your furniture lacks a cleaning code, which is often the case with vintage and antique pieces that have been modified over the years, do a simple spot test on a hidden piece of upholstery. I like to test water, vodka, and vinegar because they're always my first choices for cleaning, before getting into the more heavy-hitting chemical stuff.

Steam: If your furniture can be cleaned by water hitting the stain with a bit of steam loosens it up and makes the stain more responsive to treatment. I typically just grab my iron and and use the steam button for this application, I don't find it necessary to drag out the steamer to deal with small areas.

Clean, Phase 1: This is the phase where you cross your fingers and hope that a simple solution is all that's needed. If your furniture can be cleaned with water, mix a little dish soap with cool water, and using a wrung out sponge blot the stain with the soap mixture. Take care not to rub at the stain, at this point it's unlikely that the stain will set in deeper, but rubbing can weaken and pill your fabric. Rinse the sponge and use just water to blot out some of the soap mixture. Press dry with a cloth or paper towels. If your furniture cannot be cleaned with water, use vinegar or vodka on a cloth to blot the stains. The smell of both vinegar and vodka will disappear when the area is dry.

Clean, Phase 2: Time to go heavy duty and break out the cleaners. Any cleaner you choose to use should be spot tested in a discrete place on the piece of furniture. Some people swear by Resolve, or Tuff Stuff, and Jenny Komenda of Little Green Notebook has had some truly remarkable results with Folex. I'm fortunate that my stains came out without having to venture into this territory, but on several separate occasions when an entire glass of red wine or a mug of hot coffee has spilled Wine Away has been a real life saver. It managed to entirely remove red wine stains (caused by an unfortunately placed glass being flung across the room by an exuberant hand gesture) from the two brand-new cream side chairs in my living room.

Repeat: If your stain has survived this entire cleaning process, you are dealing with one stubborn stain. As exhausting—and possibly irritating—as the process can be, doing it all over again can give you the result you're looking for. The previously mentioned wine on white chairs situation took two full passes before the stains came out. I really thought when I entered Phase 2 for the second time that there was no way these stains were going anywhere, but perseverance paid off and the stains disappeared!

Celebrate: The seemingly impossible to remove set-in stain has been conquered! Hooray! Feel free to share your accomplishments with friends, so long as you offer to help out if they ever have need of your stain removing powers.

Prepare: Just in case a spill happens in the future that you can take care of immediately, here are some tips and tricks for how to spot clean upholstery stains that have just happened.

Happy cleaning!

Furniture Arranging 101

Have you ever arranged a room (and strained your back) to find that something about it just doesn’t flow? If you want to make a change in the feel of a room or want to switch things up for the current season, moving furniture around is a completely free way to do so. Consider these tips from Apartment Therapy as you rearrange your space.

Dining Room:

• Distance between the walls and the dining room table: Ideally, provide at least 36″ between the dining table and any walls or other furniture on all sides to allow seats to slide out easily.

• Distance between a dining table and an entrance: Provide around 48″ between the table and an entrance to allow people to enter and exit the room with ease.

• Vertical space between a dining chair and dining table: Chairs and chair arms should be able to slide under the table with ease. Leave about 7″ between the chair arm and apron of the table.

• Distance between chandelier and dining table: This is one of the more flexible topics. Low hanging lighting sets a more modern tone, but even so, it should never interfere with the ability to make conversation— no need to duck your face down to the table just to see your dinner guests. However, a light hung too high will detract from the cohesive feel of a room as well. A good rule is to hang lighting between 24″-32″ from the table.

• Area rug and dining table: A rug should span about 36″ wider on all sides of a dining table to allow chairs to pull out easily without catching.

• Space between dining chairs: Ideally provide about 24″ between chairs to prevent hitting elbows and to allow people to slide chairs in and out without any collisions or bruised knuckles.

"Living Room Updates" by Emily May is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Living Room:

• Distance between a sofa and coffee table: Allow around 18″ between the table and sofa edge to give enough leg room but to be able to set down drinks or reach appetizers without straining. Coffee table heights vary greatly, but a good rule is to keep the table height and seat height within 4 inches of each other.

• Distance between seating furniture: Aim to provide between 3.5′ and 10′ between seating options to help conversation flow without crowding a room.

• Side table and sofa height: In general, an end table should be approximately the same height as the arm of your sofa or chair. This allows guests to set down or reach for drinks without straining, and it also lends a more cohesive feel to the room.

• Distance between tv and sofa: There should be about 7′ between the tv and seating options.

• Area rugs and furniture: Too often area rugs end up feeling like bath mats. To keep your area rug from feeling random, at least the front two legs of a sofa or chair should rest on the rug.

• Distance between room-size rugs to walls: Allow about 24″ between the wall and room-size rug in a large room, and between 12″- 18″ in a smaller room.

Create a WOW Room

"Gray Blue Lime Teal Living Room" by Emily May is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Have you ever walked into someone’s home or apartment and just thought, “Wow!” as you looked around the room, only to get back home and feel like something is missing from your own space? How can you take your room from “hmm…” to “WOW”? Apartment Therapy shares these tips:

1. The right rug.

There's nothing like a rug to really tie a room together. The right rug can help to establish a room's color scheme, add texture, and unify disparate elements. Think of the rug as being the thing that balances out the other elements in the room. Is your room really colorful? Look for rug in neutral tones. If your room if full of smooth, shiny surfaces, consider a rug with a little bit of texture. Texture is really important. For even more advice on picking the right rug, click here.

2. Plants.

The human eye is naturally drawn to shapes that are found in nature, and every room could benefit from a little something organic. A great way to achieve this is with plants. They make a room more interesting and give it color and life (literally).

3. The right art.

No room is ever complete without art. The mistake that most people make when choosing art is that they don't get enough of it, and the things they pick aren't big enough. Take a critical look at your space: if your art pieces look a bit lost on the wall, or they seem dwarfed by the furniture, it's probably because they are too small. You can incorporate your existing art into a gallery wall, or try out one of these methods for creating large scale art or filling up a big blank wall.

4. Lighting.

Lamps (and pendants and chandeliers and whatnot) are important not just because they make a room look cool, but because the right lighting can make you see a room in a completely different way. Check out our guides to picking the right lighting for your living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen.

5. Textiles.

Textiles are what make a room seem warm and comfy and inviting. Throw pillows, blankets, curtains — these are the things that make the difference between a really pretty showroom floor and a home. If the only thing on your windows right now is blinds, adding at least a roman shade will help your whole room seem cozier and more complete. And pillows and throws are a gimme. Use them to make tiny tweaks to your space. Need more color? A little texture? A little shine? Add some pillows. Bam. Done.

What else would you add to this list?

Proper Place Settings

Pay attention, ladies and gentlemen, because this is some good knowledge to store away! Whether you're hosting a dinner party or are simply setting the table for dinner, it makes a good impression to set a proper table. After all, nobody will notice if you order take-out food to pass off as your own cooking, as long as you put it on the good dinnerware! Here's the breakdown, according to Apartment Therapy:

A Casual Setting

This is the everyday table setting and follows just a few rules that are built on for the fancier settings:

Photo courtesy Maxwell Ryan.

Plate - Right in the middle :)

Fork - To the left at 9:00

Knife & Spoon - To the right at 3:00 with the knife on the inside facing in (so the blade is safely towards the plate)

Glass - On the upper right at 1:00

Napkin - Underneath your forks, though you can technically play with your napkin and place it on plate or outside forks.

A Fancy Setting

Built off of the above, this roadmap allows for all the other utensils needed at a fancy meal and follows the guide that you start on the outside and move inwards towards the plate during the course of the meal.

Photo courtesy Maxwell Ryan.

Plates - In the middle with the smallest stacked on top, so that you have Charger under Entree Plate under Appetizer Plate. In this fashion each plate can be cleared and leave you with a new, clean one below. Bread plate goes to the top left at 10:00 with knife fork ON it.

Flatware - Forks go on the left at 9:00 with the smallest on the outside (dinner, salad and then fish fork). Knife goes on the right with spoons at 3:00 with the smallest spoons on the outside (soup and then fruit spoon)

Any flatware used for dessert goes at the top at 12:00 (dessert spoon and fork)

Glasses - Red or wine (or both) glasses are placed at the upper right at 1:00 with water and/or champagne above that to the left. I typically have only a water and wine glass, but you can provide lots of options here for your guests if you wish and then remove what they don't use.

Napkin - I always like to have the napkin under the forks to the left, but it is proper to have the napkin actually on the dinner plate. Either way, just don't stuff the napkin in the wine glass and try to make it look like a swan.