Sofa Reupholstery Quotes and the Nine Answers That Make Them Comparable

Five days or ten: where two quotes for one sofa part ways

Say one upholsterer quotes five working days for your three-seater and another quotes ten. Both write "re-upholstery, fabric included", and neither mentions getting the sofa down in the building's service lift. The shorter quote may be the one that keeps the old seat foam and staples new fabric over the old cover.

Recovering like that is a legitimate job when the foam is sound. Stripping to the frame, re-gluing joints, re-tying springs and cutting new foam is a different and longer one. A sagging seat is usually a foam or spring problem, so a recover leaves the sag in place.

A one-line quote does not say which you are buying.

This is about an indoor sofa. Terrace cushions and frames face sprinklers and humidity, and restoring outdoor furniture after the summer covers them.

Before asking for quotes: is the frame worth a new cover?

A sofa with a broken frame wastes every quote you collect for it. Three checks, adapted from the consumer guide Checkbook's advice on reupholstering:

• Lift one end. With a second person, raise one end a few centimetres. A sound frame lifts as one piece. One that twists, sags in the middle or creaks has loose or broken rails.
• Rock each arm. A wobbling arm has a loose joint, which glue and new corner blocks can fix if the quote includes them.
• Look underneath. Tip the sofa back and look where the black dust cover is already torn. Solid wood rails with blocks glued and screwed into the corners are worth rebuilding. Particleboard rails, or a frame held together only by staples, usually are not.

Stop there: pulling staples or prising off the dust cover is the upholsterer's job.

The checks also point to cheaper routes. If frame and fabric are fine and only the seats have flattened, new cushion foam may be the whole job, and a furniture restoration specialist can quote that alone.

If the fabric is only grubby, a professional upholstery clean costs less than any recover.

If the frame cracked in a move, claiming from the moving company comes first. A particleboard frame that racks when lifted usually means replacing the sofa.

The parts nobody sees: frame, springs and webbing

A complete quote says whether the sofa is stripped to the bare frame. Only then can the frame be inspected, loose joints re-glued and missing corner blocks added.

Most modern sofas sit on sinuous springs, zig-zag wires clipped to the front and back rails. Older pieces may have coil springs hand-tied in eight directions, or webbing stretched across the frame. "Springs checked" says nothing; the quote should say reused, re-clipped, re-tied or replaced, and whether the webbing is new.

Expect a clause such as "frame repair if required at extra cost". It is fair, but it needs a limit: the upholsterer photographs the damage and gets your approval before doing the work.

Seat foam: two figures, and the wrap around them

"New high-density foam" is a description with no number in it. Foam takes two figures, and the American Chemistry Council's furniture foam guide lists confusing them as a common buying mistake. Density, in kg/m³, is the main predictor of how long a cushion keeps its height. Hardness, the force needed to press the foam down, sets how firm it feels. A dense foam can be soft.

• A joint committee of American furniture and foam makers, reported by the Polyurethane Foam Association, found seating foam of 1.8 lb per cubic foot (about 29 kg/m³) or more performs better, and lighter foam loses more firmness in use.
• Australian standards for office and visitor chairs set at least 38 kg/m³ for seat foam and 32 kg/m³ for back foam at their heavier-duty levels.

Neither benchmark was written for a home sofa, but one used every evening sees heavier wear than the American seating minimum assumes, so the chair figures are a sensible reference. Ask for seat and back foam density separately, plus a hardness figure from the foam supplier's sheet for each. Ask whether the cushions get a new polyester fibre wrap, which rounds the edges, and what fills the back cushions (foam, fibre or feather mix), new or reused.

The UK's 1988 furniture fire safety regulations effectively require combustion-modified foam (CMHR) in British domestic sofas. That is British law. If you want CMHR in Dubai, name it on the quote and ask for the supplier's paperwork.

Fabric for a sofa that faces the afternoon sun

"Fabric included" names neither the cloth nor what it can take. The quote should name a fabric whose specification sheet you can see, with three tested figures:

• Abrasion (Martindale, EN ISO 12947). Rubbing cycles survived. Warwick's guide to its specification sheets puts heavy domestic use, recliners included, at 20,000 to 39,000; other fabric guides start that band at 25,000. A sofa used daily belongs in it.
• Lightfastness (ISO 105-B02). Graded 1 to 8 against blue-wool references, 8 being the most fade-resistant. Warwick treats 4 to 5 as an indoor result and 6 to 7 as an outdoor one.
• Pilling (ISO 12945-2). Graded 1 to 5, where 5 means none. Warwick cites 3 to 4 as the Australian minimum.

The light grade weighs more in a Dubai flat, where floor-to-ceiling glass on a west-facing tower puts hours of afternoon sun onto a sofa by the window. The Canadian Conservation Institute's note on UV filters measured ordinary glass cutting only about a quarter of UV, and warns that visible light fades dyes too. For a sofa in direct sun, ask for 6.

If you buy the fabric yourself (customer's own material), get the exact metres and minimum width from the upholsterer first and send them a sample. Makers that accept it often exclude it from their guarantee, so a fault in the cloth stays with you.

Metres, pattern repeat and the trimmings

The metre figure is one you can check. Fabric suppliers' estimators put a standard three-seater in plain fabric at roughly 14 to 18 metres on a 137 to 140 cm roll, and upholstery fabric is rarely wider than 150 cm.

Patterns need more, because every cut starts at the same point in the design: the usual allowance is one extra vertical repeat per cut length, and one supplier puts the total increase at 10 to 20%. A plain-fabric figure well above the range deserves a question, and one below it for a large repeat suggests nobody measured the repeat.

Trimmings take fabric and hours, and quotes rarely list them: piping, buttons (covered or not), a skirt, arm caps, new or refinished feet, and zips on cushion covers so they can be cleaned later. Order a spare half-metre at the same time, since a later order may come from a different dye lot.

The service lift, the calendar and the paperwork

A three-seater rarely fits a passenger lift, and many towers want a booked lift slot and a permit from building management before furniture crosses the lobby. wasl, one of Dubai's largest landlords, tells residents moving furniture out that they need a moving permit from building management. The quote should say who collects, who books the lift at each end, and whether both trips are included.

"5 to 7 days" needs a starting point. Full reupholstery is workshop work, so the sofa is gone for all of it, and if the fabric is ordered in, workshop days usually start when it arrives. Ask for the fabric lead time and the working days as two figures.

Then the terms: the deposit, when it is due and whether it comes back if the fabric proves unavailable, and two guarantees stated separately, the upholsterer's on workmanship and the fabric house's on the cloth. Before paying a deposit, confirm the business holds a trade licence covering upholstery, using the steps for checking a contractor's licence in Dubai.

One message, nine answers, every upholsterer

Send this to each upholsterer with photos of the sofa, the worn seats and the underside. Each answer is a figure or a yes or no, so the replies line up:

1. "Will you strip the sofa to the bare frame, or recover over the existing fabric? Will you re-glue loose joints and add corner blocks where needed?"
2. "What happens to the springs and webbing: reused, re-clipped or re-tied, or replaced?"
3. "Is the seat foam new? Please give its density in kg/m³, its hardness figure and its thickness, and say whether it gets a new fibre wrap."
4. "What fills the back cushions, and is that filling new or reused? Same density and hardness question for any back foam."
5. "Which fabric is included, by name and code? Please send its Martindale rub count, lightfastness grade and pilling grade. If I supply my own fabric, what width and how many metres do you need?"
6. "How many metres have you allowed, on what roll width, and how much of that is for pattern repeat?"
7. "Which of these are included: piping, buttons, skirt, arm caps, new or refinished feet, cushion zips?"
8. "Is collection and delivery included both ways, and will you coordinate the lift booking with my building?"
9. "How long is the fabric lead time, and how many working days after it arrives? What deposit do you take, what happens if you find frame damage, and what guarantee do you give on workmanship and on the fabric?"

Compare the replies one question at a time. A blank, or "standard", counts as not included until the upholsterer says otherwise in writing. Once both replies answer all nine, the quotes describe the same job, and any price gap is about the sofa you get back.

An upholsterer in Dubai who puts foam density and a lightfastness grade in writing, and knows how tower move permits work, takes some finding. Everlook lists vetted upholstery and restoration specialists with verified UAE experience and reviews from your neighbours, so the nine questions can go to several at once.

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