I have been upholstering at Cleariqo for nine years. In that time I have seen more fabric chosen for the photograph than for the room. Most clients arrive with a Pinterest folder. None of them arrive with the relative humidity of their living room. So this is a short piece about how we actually pick the cover for a Malaysian sofa, knowing what it is being asked to do.
The constraints are simple. Our living rooms are warm, often humid even with the air-conditioning on. Sun reaches one or two sofas every afternoon. Most homes have ceiling fans turning at a low speed for most of the year. And we sit on our sofas with food, with babies, with the laptop, and occasionally with the cat. The fabric has to live with all of that for a decade.
Heavy linen, almost always
Our default for sofas and armchairs is a heavy Belgian or Italian woven linen between 350 and 480 grams per square metre. It breathes, it drapes well, and it ages into a softer, more lived-in version of itself rather than collapsing. It takes wrinkles, which some clients dislike at first and almost all clients learn to love within six months. It is the closest thing the textile world has to a piece of furniture that gets better with use.
Linen will sun-bleach. That is not a flaw — it is the wood floor in fabric form. We will warn you about the side that catches the western sun and recommend a quiet rotation of the cushions if the sun lands on one half of the sofa more than the other. After three years, the colour will have settled into something more honest than the day it arrived.
Wool bouclé in the air-conditioned room
Wool bouclé is one of our most-requested fabrics and one of the harder ones to specify well in our climate. In a fully air-conditioned room with low humidity and good circulation, a Belgian or Portuguese wool bouclé is a beautiful covering for an armchair or a single slipper chair. In an open-plan living room with a ceiling fan and the doors to the garden open, we will gently say no. The wool absorbs moisture, then releases it back, and the cycle is not kind to the cushion.
Full-grain leather — the long-haul choice
We work with two Italian tanneries, and we have settled on vegetable-tanned full-grain hides between 1.4 and 1.6 millimetres thick. The colour darkens steadily over the first three or four years, takes scuffs and small scratches as part of its character, and is wiped clean with a slightly damp cloth. We have re-stretched hides on Cleariqo sofas at the ten-year mark; we have never had to replace one.
Leather is hotter to sit on than linen in our climate, especially in the first few minutes after the air-conditioning has been off. For that reason we tend to recommend it for armchairs and dining seats rather than for the main living-room sofa — but we will happily do both if the client wants it.
The single best way to extend the life of any upholstered piece is a slipcover for the dry season. We will draw and sew one for any sofa or armchair we make — for a single piece, or for the whole set.
Cottons, canvas, and the slipcover question
Heavy cotton canvas, around 300 grams per square metre, is one of the best-value covers for a family room. It washes well, it takes a generous removable cover, and it earns its place on a sofa where children, dogs and weekend afternoons happen. We use it for slipcovers more often than for fitted upholstery — the cover comes off twice a year for a cold wash, the sofa returns to looking new.
Things we are quietly cautious of
- Velvet under a ceiling fan. Cotton velvets and viscose velvets press in the direction of the fan’s air, and the pile gets a permanent ‘weather pattern’. Mohair velvet is better but expensive. We do velvet rarely, and only in rooms without overhead air movement.
- Synthetic performance fabrics. They are easy-clean, but they do not breathe, and they sit hot. In our climate that matters. We will use them for a single chair if a client really wants the easy-clean, but not for a main sofa.
- White, in a family room. If you do want white, please let us make a removable cover for it. The fabric itself is not the problem; the absence of the cover is.
How we choose, in practice
When a client commissions a sofa or armchair, the studio sends three or four fabric swatches by post, with their name and weight printed on the back. We ask the client to lay each swatch over the back of an existing chair and live with it for two or three days. The fabric that disappears from notice is almost always the right one. The fabric that catches the eye every time is often the one to put on a smaller piece — a slipper chair, a single bedside bench — rather than the main sofa.
If you would like a small set of our house swatches sent to you, write to [email protected] and tell us a little about the room. We will choose six or seven that we think will work and send them by hand within the week.
