Velvet, linen or performance fabric: which suits your home
Choose the wrong sofa fabric and you’ll know within a year: shiny patches where everyone sits, a colour faded by the window, cushions that record every splash of tea.
Notes from the bench
The journal.
Straight advice on reupholstery, fabrics, sofa care and the jobs passing through our workshop.
Booth seating that survives service: a maintenance guide for restaurants
Restaurant seating works harder in a month than a home sofa does in a year: hundreds of sittings a week, handbags and keys dragged across it, heels against the base, cleaning chemicals every night and the occasional spilled espresso.
Chesterfield care: keeping deep-buttoned leather alive
A Chesterfield is not a sofa you replace. The deep buttoning, the rolled arms level with the back, the low, studded base — it was designed to outlast fashion, and plenty of them outlast their first owners.
Made to measure: what a custom sofa really involves
Sometimes the right sofa simply doesn’t exist. The alcove is an odd width.
Springs, webbing and wobble: a sofa frame repair guide
A wobble is never just a wobble. A sofa that creaks, rocks on its legs or dips at one corner is telling you something has let go inside — and the frame is exactly the part worth fixing, because a sound frame is what makes a sofa worth keeping at all.
How we rebuild a sagging sofa seat
A sofa rarely wears out all at once. It goes at the seat first: you sit down and sink a few centimetres lower than you used to, the front edge rolls you forward, and getting up takes a small push off the arms.
Reupholster or replace? A straight answer
It’s the first question almost everyone asks us: is it worth reupholstering, or should I just buy a new sofa? The honest answer depends on what’s underneath the fabric.