Upholstery is a word primarily associated with furniture and with chair, bench, stool, etc seats in particular. It can be used equally for domestic and office furniture plus automobile, boat and airplane seats. An upholstered seat will have padding, springs, or webbing (to cushion the affect of sitting on a solid hard surface) and this will be covered (kept in place) by a layer of fabric (natural or synthetic) or leather. Although it is stretching the meaning a little, the term upholstered can also be applied to mattresses.
In the past, padding materials were primarily animal hair (particularly horse hair), straw or hay, coconut fiber and other plant fibers like burlap (hessian), cotton, flax, jute, etc. Today, synthetic sponge type foams are more commonly used. The padding has to absorb the weight of the sitter but also recover its thickness when the person gets up from the chair ? hence the use of springs where possible.
Keeping Upholstery Clean
In a city like New York, even the air that we breathe is not totally clean but contaminated with all sorts of airborne particles which do find their way indoors and will settle on any piece of furniture. In addition, there is the ?dirt? that humans carry in and deposit on furniture ? sometimes quite catastrophically: such as when spilling a drink. Another feature of city living is that pet animals are often allowed complete freedom of movement within the home and even encouraged to sit on the furniture. Nothing remains clean for very long.
Which is why we all have a quite long list of daily routine cleaning chores (or we hire cleaning or janitorial services to carry them out for us). Thorough vacuuming will remove much of the solid ?dirt? and washing down can remove spilt liquids: this is fine for solid surfaces like tiled floors or wooden tables and chairs but; not so effective when it comes to upholstered furniture.
Many of the upholstery materials will absorb liquids and fabric covers can allow particles to sink through into the padding along with small bugs, etc. Additionally, the older fibrous padding can trap all manner of things inside it.
Getting the upholstery clean without damaging any of its materials is a skilled job requiring much knowledge of the materials themselves. It is for this reason that it could be safer to rely on the services of one of the upholstery cleaning companies In New York City for any major cleaning job that might be required.
