For most UK dining rooms, a tightly woven polyester blend, a performance velvet or a good quality faux leather will outperform everything else. Woven blends give the best balance of durability and appearance, velvet suits formal rooms and hides light marking well, and faux leather is the sensible choice where spills are frequent. Pure linen and loose weaves such as boucle look beautiful but wear faster on a chair used every day.
The decision rests on three things: how heavily the chairs are used, how easily the fabric cleans, and how tightly it is woven. Colour and pattern come afterwards. A fabric chosen on looks alone will disappoint within a year on a chair that seats someone at every meal.
Upholstery fabrics carry an abrasion rating, most often expressed as a Martindale figure. It measures how many cycles of rubbing the fabric withstands before showing wear. For dining chairs, general domestic upholstery ratings are the minimum, and anything rated for heavy domestic use will last considerably longer.
Ratings are a guide rather than a guarantee. A high rating on a loose weave still snags on a belt buckle, and a lower rated fabric with a very tight construction can outlast it in practice. Feel the surface: if you can catch a fingernail in the weave, a zip will catch too.
Ask specifically whether a fabric is intended for upholstery or for curtains. Dress and curtain fabrics are woven for drape, not friction, and they are the single most common cause of a recover job failing early.
This is the default choice for good reason. Blended weaves combine the appearance of natural fibre with the resilience of synthetic, resist creasing, and take colour consistently across a roll. They also cut and staple cleanly, which matters if you are doing the work yourself.
Look for a flat, dense weave rather than anything with a raised texture. Flat weaves shed crumbs, wipe over with a damp cloth and do not trap dust in the way a chunky texture does.
They also suit almost any room. Where the rest of the scheme is doing the work, a plain woven seat lets the frame and the table lead. Our fabric dining chairs UK sale range is built largely around these weaves because they hold up so consistently.
Velvet has become the most popular upholstery finish for dining chairs in recent years, and modern performance velvets deserve their reputation. The dense pile resists abrasion well, hides light marking, and the way it catches light adds depth to a room that flat fabrics cannot.
The trade offs are worth knowing. Velvet has a nap, so all pieces must be cut running the same direction or the chairs will appear to be different colours. It also shows water marks if a spill is rubbed rather than blotted. Cleaning is simply a matter of brushing the pile back in one direction once dry.
Cotton velvet crushes more readily than polyester velvet, so for dining use the synthetic version is usually the better decision. The velvet dining chairs UK sale collection shows how the finish behaves across a full set under normal room lighting.
Where children eat daily, or where the chairs sit in an open plan kitchen, a wipeable surface is hard to argue against. Faux leather cleans with a damp cloth, resists staining and does not absorb cooking smells the way a woven fabric can.
Quality varies enormously. Cheap coatings crack and peel at the seat edge within a couple of years, particularly where the material flexes over a foam edge. Look for a thicker gauge with a fabric backing, and avoid anything that feels stiff or plasticky when folded.
Real leather lasts longer still and develops a patina, though it costs more and needs occasional conditioning. Both options are represented in the leather dining chairs UK sale range if you want to compare the look before committing to a fabric order.
Pure linen is lovely and creases permanently under a seated weight. Boucle is soft and pulls into loops when it meets a zip. Silk blends mark with water. Loose chenille sheds. None of these are wrong choices, but they belong on occasional chairs rather than the four seats used every evening.
A reasonable compromise is to use the more delicate fabric on two carver chairs at the ends of the table, which see less use, and a hard wearing weave on the side chairs. Keeping the colour consistent means the difference in texture reads as deliberate.
Very pale fabrics show every mark and very dark ones show dust and lint. Mid tones such as stone, olive, teal and charcoal sit comfortably between the two and stay looking clean for longer.
Consider the room’s light. North facing dining rooms cool colours down, making greys look blue and beiges look grey. South facing rooms warm everything. Always view a sample in the actual room at the time of day you use it most, rather than deciding under a shop light.
Pattern is worth considering for a busy household. A subtle woven texture or a small geometric hides everyday marking far better than a flat plain, without dominating the space.
Order all the fabric for a set in one go, from a single roll. Dye lots vary and a second order weeks later can be visibly different. Add a spare half metre for repairs, since one damaged chair is far easier to fix than to match.
Whether you recover yourself or use an upholsterer, ask about stain protection treatment. It is applied at the finishing stage and buys you time to blot a spill before it soaks into the fibre.
If the sums start to look close to the price of new seating, compare properly rather than assuming. We supply dining furniture to homes across the country at Furniture in Fashion, and the dining chairs UK sale range often makes replacement the more straightforward answer once labour is factored in.
Ordering samples costs nothing and prevents the most expensive mistake in any recovering project. What matters is how you test them.
View each sample in the dining room itself, at the time of day you eat there most. A fabric chosen under shop lighting or on a screen frequently reads as a different colour at home, and north facing rooms in particular cool warm tones considerably.
Rub the sample hard with your thumbnail and then with a fingernail through a piece of clothing with a zip. If the surface pills, snags or shows a shine where you rubbed, imagine that after two years of daily use.
Test a spill. Put a drop of water and a drop of oil on a corner, leave them for ten minutes, then blot. How the fabric behaves tells you more about living with it than any specification sheet.
Drape the sample over the seat you intend to cover and stand back. Small swatches always look busier than the finished chair, so a pattern that seems overwhelming in the hand may be perfectly judged across a set of six.
Keep the samples once you have chosen. They are useful when picking a rug, curtains or a nearby cabinet later, and they record the exact fabric name if you need more.
A fabric that works in isolation can still sit awkwardly in a finished room. Look at the three largest surfaces around the table first: the flooring, the walls and any large storage piece. Chair seats read as a repeated block of colour across six positions, so they carry more visual weight than their size suggests.
Where the room already has pattern, in a rug or at the window, keep the chairs plain and let the texture do the work. Where everything is quiet, the chairs are the natural place to introduce interest.
Consider the tabletop too. A busy timber grain competes with a strong fabric, while a plain glass or painted top will carry one comfortably. Holding the sample against the actual table for a few minutes tells you more than any amount of deliberation on a screen.
Modern performance velvet is very practical. It resists abrasion, hides light marking and cleans by brushing the pile. Cotton velvet crushes more and suits lighter use.
A tightly woven polyester blend rated for heavy domestic use. Weave density matters as much as the abrasion rating, because loose constructions snag regardless of their score.
Yes, and it can be a sensible choice. Outdoor upholstery fabrics are designed to resist staining and fading, though they sometimes feel firmer than indoor cloth.
Mid tones with a subtle texture or small pattern. Very pale fabrics show food marks and very dark ones show dust, lint and pet hair clearly.
It is worth doing on woven fabrics. It does not make a chair spill proof, but it slows absorption enough to let you blot most accidents before they set.
Reupholstering a dining room chair with leather gives you a hard wearing, wipe clean seat…
The space between a kitchen island and a dining table should be at least 100cm,…
Indoor dining chairs can go outside for an afternoon in dry weather, but they will…
Covering a dining chair seat can mean three quite different jobs, and choosing the right…
A standard dining table is 74cm to 76cm high, but the number that actually determines…
A custom dining table in the UK generally costs between £900 and £4,000, with the…
This website uses cookies.