To upholster a dining chair, remove the seat pad from the frame, strip off the old fabric and staples, replace the foam and wadding if they have worn, then stretch new fabric over the pad and staple it to the underside working from the centre of each side outwards. A drop in seat pad takes around forty five minutes per chair. A fully upholstered frame with a padded back takes considerably longer.
Most dining chairs use a drop in seat, which is the easiest upholstery job in the house. Four screws release the pad, and everything after that happens on a workbench rather than on the chair itself.
Turn the chair upside down. If you see four screws holding a separate padded panel into a rebate in the frame, you have a drop in seat. This is the most common construction on dining chairs and the most straightforward to work on.
If the fabric is stapled directly to the outside of the frame with no removable panel, you have a fixed seat. These are still workable but you have to protect the wood while you strip and restaple, and the finished result depends heavily on how neatly you fold the corners.
If the chair has a padded back as well as a seat, treat them as two separate jobs. The back is often the harder of the two because it is visible from both sides and needs a clean edge on the rear face.
You need a staple gun, either manual or electric, with 8mm to 10mm staples. A manual gun works but electric saves your hand across a set of six chairs. You also need a staple remover or a flat head screwdriver and pliers, fabric scissors, a screwdriver for the fixings, and a hammer for tapping down proud staples.
For materials, budget for upholstery fabric, high resilience foam if the existing pad has collapsed, polyester wadding, and hessian or calico if you need to replace the base layer.
Foam density matters more than thickness. Look for high resilience foam at 32kg per cubic metre or above. Lower density foam feels fine on day one and flattens within a few months of daily use, which means doing the whole job again.
Remove the seat pad and place it face down on a protected surface. Take a photograph before you start, since it records how the corners were folded and how the fabric was tensioned. That reference is more useful than it sounds when you are three chairs in.
Work the staples out one at a time with the remover, easing them up and pulling them free with pliers. This is slow and it is the least enjoyable part of the job, but tearing the fabric off leaves broken staple shanks embedded in the timber, and those will foul your new staples.
Keep the old fabric intact if you can. It becomes your pattern for cutting the new pieces, which saves a great deal of measuring and guessing on shaped seats.
Press down on the exposed foam. If it springs back promptly and evenly, it is still serviceable and you can reuse it. If it stays compressed, feels crumbly at the edges or has visible depressions, replace it.
Check the base beneath. Drop in seats usually have either a solid plywood panel or webbing stretched across a timber frame. Plywood should be free of cracks. Webbing should be taut, and if it sags more than a centimetre under hand pressure it needs replacing with new jute or elastic webbing, interwoven and tacked at the edges.
Replacing the base is the step most people skip and it is the one that determines how the chair feels in two years. A perfect fabric job over a sagging base still gives you a chair that sinks.
Use the old foam or the seat base as a template. Draw around it on the new foam with a marker and cut with a long bladed serrated knife or an electric carving knife, keeping the blade vertical. A slightly oversized cut is better than undersized, since foam compresses slightly when the fabric pulls over it.
Wrap the foam in polyester wadding, taking it over the top and down the sides. Wadding does two things: it softens the sharp cut edge of the foam so the finished seat has a gently rounded profile, and it stops the fabric abrading directly against the foam, which is what causes foam to break down at the edges.
Trim the wadding so it reaches just past the underside edge. Excess wadding folded underneath creates lumps that show through the fabric.
Lay the new fabric face down and place the padded seat on top, centring any pattern carefully. Cut the fabric with a margin of at least 8cm beyond the edge of the pad on all sides. That margin gives you enough to grip and pull.
Check the grain direction before cutting. On a plain fabric the grain should still run front to back for consistency across the set, since the weave catches light differently depending on direction and mismatched chairs look subtly wrong under a pendant light.
If your fabric has a strong pattern, decide where the motif sits on each chair and mark that position on the template so all six match. This is the detail that distinguishes a considered job from a rushed one.
Start at the centre of the front edge. Pull the fabric over the pad with firm, even tension and put in one staple. Move to the centre of the back edge, pull with the same tension and staple. Then do the centre of each side. You now have four anchor points holding the fabric square.
Work outwards from each of those four staples towards the corners, placing staples every 3cm to 4cm and maintaining consistent tension. Do not work round in a circle, because that pushes any excess fabric ahead of you and it all ends up bunched at the last corner.
Tension should be firm enough to remove wrinkles but not so tight that it distorts the foam or pulls the weave out of square. If you see the pattern skewing, you are pulling too hard on one side.
Corners are where the job is judged. On a square pad, pull the fabric diagonally over the corner and staple it, then fold the two side flaps in neatly on top of each other and staple each one. This creates a single clean pleat on each side of the corner.
Trim away excess bulk from underneath before making the final folds. Thick upholstery fabric folded four times creates a lump that prevents the pad sitting flat in the frame.
On rounded corners, ease the fabric round with small evenly spaced pleats rather than one large fold. Take your time here. It is the part that repays patience most visibly.
Trim the excess fabric to around 2cm beyond the staple line. Some people cover the underside with a black bottom cloth, stapled over the raw edges. It is not structurally necessary but it gives a tidy finish and stops the raw edges fraying and shedding threads onto the floor.
Drop the pad back into the frame and check the fit. If it is tight, the added thickness of the new fabric and wadding is the cause. Remove a little material from the underside edges of the foam rather than forcing it, since a forced pad puts pressure on the frame joints.
Refit the screws, tightening them evenly. Sit on the chair and check for any movement or unevenness before moving on to the next one.
Dining chairs face food, drink and daily compression, so the fabric specification matters. Look for a Martindale rub rating above 25,000 for general domestic use, and consider a stain resistant finish if the chairs are used by children.
Velvet has become popular and performs better than its reputation suggests, provided you choose a polyester velvet rather than a cotton one. It resists marking and the pile hides light wear. If you like the look but would rather not tackle the upholstery yourself, our modern velvet dining chairs UK sale range covers a broad spread of colours.
Leather and faux leather wipe clean and suit households where spills are frequent, and our leather dining chairs UK sale collection is worth comparing. Woven upholstery cottons offer the widest choice of colour and texture and are the easiest fabric to work with for a first attempt.
Reupholstery makes sense on a chair with a sound frame and good bones. It rarely makes sense on a chair with loose joints, a cracked seat base or a design you no longer like, since the labour is the same regardless of what you started with.
Cost the materials honestly before beginning. Fabric, foam and wadding for six chairs can add up, and at that point comparing against complete modern dining table and chairs sets UK sale is a reasonable exercise. At Furniture in Fashion we deliver free to most UK mainland postcodes, so the comparison is straightforward.
How long does it take to upholster a dining chair?
A drop in seat takes around forty five minutes once you have the technique. A chair with a padded back and fixed seat takes two to three hours.
What staples should I use for chair upholstery?
8mm to 10mm staples in a manual or electric staple gun. Shorter staples work loose in softwood frames.
Do I need to replace the foam?
Only if it stays compressed when you press it, crumbles at the edges, or has visible dips. Foam that springs back evenly can be reused.
How much fabric do I need per dining chair?
Around 0.5m to 0.7m of 140cm wide fabric for a drop in seat. A chair with a padded back needs closer to 1.2m.
Can I upholster over the existing fabric?
It is possible on a very thin, flat original, but the extra thickness usually stops the pad refitting into the frame and any lumps beneath telegraph through. Stripping is better.
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