Pale fabrics, bright rooms
A lot of the sofas and chairs we see in Ballsbridge are pale: cream linen armchairs in a modern apartment, an oatmeal three-seater in a period drawing room, a stone-coloured corner sofa in a converted mews. They look wonderful for a year or two. Then the arms go grey, the headrest picks up a shadow, and the seat cushion everyone uses turns a shade darker than the rest.
That's mostly body oil, hair product and fine dust, and it cleans out of most fabrics well. The catch is that pale natural fibres are the easiest to get wrong. Linen and cotton can shrink, water-mark or turn brown if too much water goes in or it dries too slowly. So the work here is as much about control as cleaning.
The video on this page was filmed on an upholstery job in Ballsbridge.
Reading the code before anything gets wet
Somewhere on most sofas there's a label with a cleaning code, usually under a seat cushion or on the deck the cushions sit on. Before we quote, we'd like a photo of it. The letters mean:
- W. Water-based cleaning is allowed. Hot-water extraction is fine after a test.
- WS or W/S. Water or solvent, used carefully. We clean these with less moisture and more passes of the vacuum.
- S. Solvent only. We don't wet-clean S fabrics, and we'll say so before booking rather than on the day.
- X. Vacuum or brush only. No liquid cleaning at all.
Imported and designer pieces sometimes have no code, or a label in another language. If that's yours, send a close-up of the fabric and the maker's name, and we'll judge it with you.
Chenille and other textured blends are common on newer sofas here too. They usually take water well, but their soft pile goes fuzzy if it's scrubbed, so we work the tool gently and brush the pile back into line before it dries.
The hidden-spot test
Even a W fabric gets tested. We pick somewhere that won't show, such as the back of the skirt, the underside of a cushion or the back of a sofa that stands against a wall. A little cleaning solution goes on, and a white cloth is pressed onto it. If any colour comes off on the cloth, or the fabric puckers or darkens as it dries, we stop and talk it through with you. It takes a few minutes and it's the most important part of the job.
spotless.ieCovers stay on the cushions
It's tempting to unzip the covers and put them through the washing machine. Please don't. Zips on sofa cushions are there so the foam can be fitted at the factory, not so the covers can be laundered. A washed cover can shrink enough that it won't go back on, and even if it does, it comes out a slightly different shade from the arms and back, which were never washed. Cleaning every part of the sofa in place keeps it all one colour.
Have a pale sofa that's lost its colour? Send a photo of the sofa, the care label and the worst of the marks on WhatsApp. We'll reply with a price, usually the same day.
What we don't take on
Our work is fabric upholstery. We don't clean leather or faux leather, and we won't wet-clean anything marked S or X. Nor can a clean repair wear: a seat that has gone shiny, a pulled thread or a sun-bleached arm will look cleaner but not new. Silk and very delicate antique fabrics are better with a specialist, and we'll tell you if we think yours is one of them. If a piece is past saving, with the frame broken or the foam collapsed, furniture removal can take it away.
Dry by evening, with a little planning
Most sofas are dry within a few hours. A warm apartment with the windows open dries upholstery quickly; a cold Victorian drawing room takes longer. We stand the cushions on their edges and set air movers going, and you can help by keeping the room warm and a window open.
Keep pets off until it's fully dry, because damp fabric marks easily and paw prints set in. If you have small children, a morning booking means the sofa is usually ready by teatime, and a throw over the seats for the first day or two keeps sticky hands off the clean fabric.
Ballsbridge, Donnybrook and Dublin 4
We clean sofas and chairs right across Ballsbridge and its neighbours, from the apartment schemes to the big period houses. Donnybrook has its own sofa cleaning page; for carpets in the area, see carpet cleaning in Ballsbridge and our Dublin 4 page.
Pricing is per piece: each sofa by its number of seats, each armchair, and any footstools, with heavy soiling taken into account. You'll have a fixed figure before you book. Mattresses and carpets can be added to the same visit: see mattress cleaning. Ciprian, who runs Spotless, trained in carpet cleaning with Prochem in 2018, and every job is fully insured. Our main upholstery cleaning page has more on fabrics, and our sofa care guide covers looking after it between cleans.
