Cotton, velvet, suede, leatherette: what each fabric needs

Every upholstery fabric fails in its own way, and each one has a cleaning mistake that ruins it. Knowing which fabric you own is more than half of knowing how to look after it. If your sofa still has its care tag — under a cushion or on the back of the frame — that letter settles the question: W means water-based cleaning is safe, S means solvent only, WS means either, X means vacuum only.

If there is no tag, which is normal for carpenter-made and reupholstered sofas, the fabric has to be identified by feel and by a small test on a hidden patch. Here is what each of the common ones needs.

Cotton and cotton blends

The most common upholstery in Nellore homes, and the most forgiving. Cotton takes hot-water extraction well and comes back noticeably brighter.

Two cautions. Deep dyes — reds, indigos, block prints — can bleed, so a colourfastness test comes first. And cotton absorbs, so a spill goes straight into the padding and must be blotted immediately, never rubbed. Pale cotton in a dusty locality will go grey within a year without a proper clean, because the grit sits at the base of the weave where a vacuum cannot reach.

Velvet and velour

Beautiful, and unforgiving of water. Wetting velvet crushes the pile and dries it in flattened patches with a hard edge that no amount of brushing will lift. Velvet gets low-moisture dry cleaning, then grooming so the whole pile lies in one direction.

Day to day: vacuum with a brush attachment and no beater bar, and blot spills with a dry white cloth. Never scrub it. A cushion that has been sat on in the same place for months can often be revived just by steaming from a distance — held above the fabric, not touching — and brushing the pile back up.

Suede and microsuede

Real suede is leather with a napped finish. It stains from water alone, so any liquid is a problem and only a specialist dry method is safe. Microsuede — the synthetic version, much more common in furniture sold here — is far tougher and usually carries an S or WS code.

For both, the everyday tool is a soft brush, always used in one direction. Dried mud or food is brushed off once it is completely dry, not while it is wet.

Leatherette and rexine

The workhorse of Indian sofas: a coated fabric that wipes clean with a damp cloth and needs no steam at all. Its enemies are heat and dryness. Sun on one arm of the sofa through an afternoon window is what cracks the coating, and once it peels there is no repair, only recovering the piece.

Wipe it with a barely damp cloth, keep it out of direct sun, and skip anything alcohol-based — including most household surface sprays, which strip the finish.

Genuine leather

Cleaned, never soaked. A pH-balanced leather cleaner takes off the surface soil and a conditioner puts back the oils that humidity and heat pull out. In coastal areas the salt in the air plus the heat means leather dries and stiffens faster, so it wants conditioning two or three times a year rather than once.

Never use a household detergent, a hard brush, or a hair dryer on leather. Each of those does damage you cannot undo.

Quick reference

Fabric	Method	The mistake to avoid
Cotton, polyester, microfibre	Hot-water extraction	Rubbing a fresh spill
Velvet, velour	Low-moisture dry clean	Any soaking
Suede, microsuede	Dry method, soft brush	Water on real suede
Leatherette, rexine	Damp wipe	Direct sun, alcohol cleaners
Genuine leather	Clean and condition	Detergent, heat drying

When to call a technician

Call when you cannot identify the fabric, when the whole piece needs doing rather than one patch, or when a stain has clearly gone past the surface into the foam. Our rate card covers any of these fabrics at the same price — ₹699 for a 2-seater, ₹999 for a 3-seater, ₹1,499 for an L-shape set — because the price follows the size of the sofa, not the material. The method changes; the cost does not.