Furniture is essential to a functional, comfortable, and pleasing home.
Upholstered furniture, in particular, is central to the daily lives of most households.
Our couches and armchairs are where we socialize, read a good book, watch a movie, eat a snack (or sometimes an entire meal), do homework, wait-up for someone to come home, have a good cry, take a nap.
But the more used and loved our upholstered furniture, the more subject it is to dirt and damage and the more quickly the textiles that cover it will start to show signs of wear and tear.
With this in mind, here are seven reasons why people use slipcovers, each of which demonstrates their considerable worth.
In this article: Why do people use slipcovers? ONE. To maximize the life of upholstered furniture TWO. To safeguard furniture against spills, stains, fading, and wear-and-tear. THREE. To protect upholstered furniture from pets. FOUR. To revive otherwise serviceable furniture (cost-effectively). FIVE. To redecorate (again … cost-effectively). SIX. To facilitate household cleaning and ongoing furniture maintenance. SEVEN. To reduce the environmental footprint of furniture.
Why do people use slipcovers?
Slipcovers offer an ideal way to protect, maintain, and revive one of the most expensive investments in our homes – our furniture.
Here are seven good reasons to use a slipcover on your couch (or other upholstered furniture)!
ONE. To maximize the life of upholstered furniture.
Furniture is expensive.
You can expect to spend from $1,500 to $3,000 for a high-quality couch and over $5,000 for a custom sofa. Even a budget-friendly sofa will be in the $300 to $1,500 range.
It is, therefore, financially savvy to preserve your upholstered furniture, in order to optimize the cost-benefit of your furniture investment.
A slipcover can be used to protect your couch on the front end or to revive it on the back end and, either way, can help you prolong the life of your furniture, increasing the value of your original investment and staving off the need to invest again.
TWO. To safeguard furniture against spills, stains, fading, and wear-and-tear.
When it comes to protecting upholstered furniture, top tips include:
- Invest in stain-protection products.
- Avoid exposing your furniture to direct sunlight, heat, moisture, or extreme temperatures.
- Vacuum, flip, and clean cushions regularly with manufacturer recommended or professional upholstery cleaners.
Sometimes tipsters go so far as to suggest simply covering your upholstered furniture from the get-go (which does seem a little counter-intuitive if you have just gone to great lengths to choose and purchase the perfectly upholstered piece or pieces).
What all these tips indicate, however, is an unavoidable truth – upholstery is not magic. Just like clothing and other fabrics, upholstery is subject to stains, fading, and wear.
As humans, we cover our skin to protect it – and a slipcover can do the same for your couch. You can cover your couch from the outset if you like. Or you can go old-school, covering your upholstered furniture for daily use and letting its good-as-new upholstery shine for guests or on special occasions.
THREE. To protect upholstered furniture from pets.
If you read slipcover reviews, you will quickly see that pets, much as we love them, motivate many a slipcover purchase. Consider the following excerpts from real reviews on the SureFit website:
- “This is the only slipcover that works with my furniture, decor, and energetic dog. Her nails don’t go through and rip the fabric the way they do with other slipcovers.”
- “We bought two covers for our couches that we love, but not as much as our cat, who had attacked the armrests.”
- “We bought this to cover up cat damage to our otherwise nice sofa.”
- “We are animal lovers and allow our huge dog on our couch for snuggles. Some of his toys really did a number on our couch cushions. … I found these slipcovers and now my couch has been restored.”
My real life attests to this as well.
My mother-in-law, for instance, recently shared her search for the perfect slipcover to protect her reclining sofa from her Cairn Terrier (who is still resisting potty training).
I myself rely on slipcovered IKEA Ektorp couches (and a good supply of replacement covers) to remediate cat-scratch damage to my living room furniture. And I have also implemented a full-on sofa covering strategy (to which SureFit denim slipcovers are integral) to protect the sofas in our finished basement from what were, at one time, 13 rescue cats.
FOUR. To revive otherwise serviceable furniture (cost-effectively).
The upholstery that covers your couch or armchair will be one of the first places that your furniture shows signs of wear and tear.
And the more use your furniture gets, the truer this will be.
You can reasonably expect your couch to stop “sparking joy” aesthetically long before it has ceased to be serviceable, comfortable, and loved.
Market research backs this up.
A much-cited 2019 survey conducted for furniture seller, Rove Concepts, by One Poll found that 3 out of 10 survey respondents expressed a desire to replace their current couch despite the majority of respondents – 70 percent – rating their couch as comfortable. More than one-fifth of survey respondents indicated that they wished to replace their couch because it was faded or outdated and further indicated that they were “embarrassed by the appearance of their home.”
It’s important to feel happy in your home.
But, if the problem is only upholstery deep, with even the more expensive ready-made slipcovers costing $200 to $300 – a fraction of the cost of a new couch – why not re-cover rather than replace otherwise serviceable furniture?
FIVE. To redecorate (again … cost-effectively).
If one slipcover is good, maybe two are better, or five, or ten.
That’s one of the great benefits of slipcovers. You are not limited to a single upholstery fabric. Its as if your couch has its own wardrobe.
Slipcovers of any number and variety fold and fit into your linen closet and can be whisked out any time you wish to change your room’s aesthetics.
Looking for a lighter, beachier look for the spring and summer? Presto! White canvas slipcover.
Want something cozier for the fall and winter? Voila! Plush chenille or faux leather slipcover in darker, warmer tones.
Whatever matches your current or recently updated décor.
But the couch itself remains the same, How easy (and cost-effective) is that?
SIX. To facilitate household cleaning and ongoing furniture maintenance.
Whether you clean as obsessively as Aunt Petunia in Harry Potter or only clean under the duress of imminently arriving company, at some point you will probably clean your house and either way you will have to acknowledge that no matter how much you might wish for the ease, you cannot throw an entire sofa into the washing machine.
You can, however, easily remove and, in most cases, machine wash a slipcover.
Child drops chocolate ice cream on the couch? Slipcover goes into the wash. Dog runs across the sofa leaving muddy pawprints? Slipcover goes into the wash. Best friend dribbles merlot on the armchair? Slipcover goes into the wash. Cat spews furball onto the loveseat? Slipcover goes into the wash. You get the idea.
Subtract the dogs and substitute “husband” for “child” and all these things (and more!) have happened to me … or rather, in fairness, to my couch.
You just cannot beat a slipcover as a tool for helping you maintain the cleanliness of your couch.
I defy you to.
SEVEN. To reduce the environmental footprint of furniture.
Maybe reducing waste is not the foremost reason in people’s minds for using slipcovers, but it’s a good one.
Americans throw away 12.1 million tons of furniture and furnishings each year according to the most recent data provided by the U.S. EPA, constituting approximately 4.1 percent of total municipal solid waste in the United States.
And while the expected lifespan of a couch is between 5 and 15 years, perhaps as long as twenty, 3 out of 10 respondents to the One Poll couch survey (mentioned above) expressed the desire to replace a sofa that they had owned, on average, for a mere 6 years.
Admittedly couches are not particularly long lived as furniture goes.
But even by upholstered furniture standards, 6 years is not very old.
Given what we know about aesthetic dissatisfaction with couches outpacing their structural failure, I would argue that when it comes to reducing the environmental footprint of your upholstered furniture, slipcovers are ideal!
They help your older couch look brand new without your in fact buying a brand new couch.
By slipcovering your couch rather than replacing it, you will not only be reducing the impact of disposal, by staving off your new furniture purchase you will be reducing its environmental impact at every stage of the furniture product lifecycle.
Good job, slipcover!
Slipcovers offer an ideal way to protect, maintain, revive, and yes, conserve upholstered furniture.
Having used slipcovers for nearly three decades for every one of the seven reasons given above, I have developed an ever-growing appreciation of these humble household furnishings and what they are able to do to measurably improve my life.
No joke.
Over the years slipcovers have shifted from an afterthought or last-ditch solution in my mind to a tool that I actively seek to purchase and use because I have come to understand how much money and aggravation they save me.
That’s why I use slipcovers.
Why do you?
Please share your story with me and with other readers in the comments section below.
