Guide · upholstery in Melbourne
Australian sofas use one of three spring systems: serpentine (zigzag) springs clipped to the rails, coil springs hand-tied with cord, or pocket springs sealed inside the cushions. Springs rarely wear out; the clips, ties and rails they fix to fail, so one spring "snaps" while the rest look fine. Hand-tied means every coil is lashed to its neighbours and the frame with cord, and we tie nine ways.
Last updated: October 2026
Get a free quoteCall 0425 832 619Any lounge from the last 60 years has serpentine springs, coil springs or pocket springs, sometimes two of them in the same piece. Serpentine is in roughly nine in ten lounges we open from the 1980s on. Coils are in older and better-built pieces. Pocket springs live inside cushions, not under them.
| System | Where you find it | How it feels | What actually fails | Size of the repair |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serpentine (zigzag) | Most lounges and recliners since the 1980s, nearly all imports | Firm, springy, shallow | The clip, the staple or the rail, rarely the wire | Small if caught early, a seat strip if several dropped |
| Coil (hand-tied) | Pre-1980 lounges, antiques, Chesterfields, quality Australian-made pieces | Deep, slow, even give | The cord and the webbing under the coils, rarely the coil | A seat strip to re-web and re-tie |
| Pocket springs | Inside loose seat cushions, sofa bed mattresses, some backs | Soft, mattress-like | The foam or fibre around the unit, rarely the springs | A cushion rebuild, the base is untouched |
Springs are the strongest thing in a sofa, and the parts holding them are the weakest. The fix is almost always at the ends of the spring, not in the middle.
A serpentine spring is 9-gauge wire bent into a continuous zigzag, run front to back, arched 25 to 40 mm and clipped to both rails every 100 to 125 mm. When we open a seat with "a broken spring", four times out of five the wire is intact and the clip or the rail has let go.
Every time you sit, the spring rocks in its clip, a small steel bracket held by two staples, often into pine or plywood rather than hardwood. Over ten years the staples work loose, the clip fatigues, or the rail splits along the grain. The spring drops, loses its arch and, because the row is linked with helical springs, drags its neighbours down. That is the dip in one seat with the fabric still fine.
We say it plainly: the clips go, not the springs.
What other shops get wrong is stapling new clips straight back into the same split pine. It holds for a year. A clip is only as good as the timber under it.
Coil springs are double-cone steel springs, 100 to 230 mm tall, sewn to jute webbing and tied to each other and to the frame with laid cord so every coil stays upright and level. Hand-tying is the whole job. An untied coil is a spring rolling around in a box.
Each spring is lashed front to back, side to side and across both diagonals, knotted on both sides of the coil as the cord passes: eight ways is the traditional count of the directions the cord runs over each coil. We tie nine ways. The ninth tie locks the crown of each coil to its neighbours so the row cannot walk sideways.
When a coil seat fails, the coil is almost never the culprit. The cord dries and lets go, so a spring leans and the seat develops a wave, or the jute webbing rots and the whole unit drops through the frame. The sequence is new webbing first, the same coils re-sewn and re-tied, then new padding.
A properly re-tied coil seat has a depth of give no serpentine seat can imitate, which is why we keep coils rather than convert to zigzag. For a period piece, our guide to traditional versus modern antique reupholstery covers that decision.
Pocket springs are small coils sealed one by one into fabric sleeves, glued into a unit, wrapped in foam or fibre and zipped inside a loose cushion. They are a cushion filling, not a seat support, so a sprung cushion that has "gone" is a refoam job, not a respring. The springs under the cushion are a separate system.
Retailers like sprung cushions because they feel like a mattress on the showroom floor. What fails is the layer around the unit: the foam wrap, often only 10 to 15 mm thick, compresses and the fibre flattens, so the springs show as ridges through the cover. Most sprung cushions we open still have a level, silent unit inside a dead wrap. We keep the unit when that is so and rebuild the wrap in Dunlop HR35 foam at 165 medium or 200 firm, our residential standard. The springs in a sprung cushion are rarely the problem; the 10 mm of foam around them is.
Where the cushion sits on a tired serpentine base, both read as one sag; we separate them on the bench, and the sofa cushion refoaming page explains the cushion half. A sprung cushion is not a mark of quality, and a solid block of high-resilience foam outlasts it.
A board over the springs does not fix a dropped spring. It takes the springs out of the job and sends every kilogram into the rails and the cushion foam. The seat feels firm for a few weeks, then the foam, built to work on a sprung base, goes flat. Every board we have removed had dead foam above it.
The DIY fixes the forums push share one fault: they treat the top of the seat while the failure is at the rails. Boards, zip ties, tie wire and the online spring repair kits all leave the split timber and the dropped clip where they were.
A zip tie turns one broken clip into three: by the time a zip-tied seat reaches our bench, the two clips next door have usually gone too. If a seat has dropped, the cheapest real repair is to open it now while the rails are still sound, because every month on a board or a tie costs a rail.
Respringing a serpentine seat means stripping it to the frame: dust cover off, every spring and clip out, rails repaired, new wire cut and crowned, new clips screwed to sound timber, new helicals, then hessian, foam and cover. That is half a day to a day of bench time per seat; a clip refit is under an hour.
When the piece comes back depends on the booking and on any fabric being recovered. That gap is why we ask for a photo of the underside before quoting; from the floor we can usually see whether one clip has let go, a rail has split, or the whole row has dropped. For what else makes a seat sink, the sagging sofa repair page covers webbing and foam alongside springs.
Sometimes the right answer is no springs at all. Elastic webbing, which Australians also call strapping, is rubber band stretched across the seat both ways. We web rather than respring when:
We fit zigzag only when the design or the customer calls for it, hand-tie coils where coils belong, and web when webbing suits the piece. The mistake is putting one where the other belongs. One frame takes none of them: cheap flat-pack lounges are often particleboard, and there is nothing in particleboard for a clip to hold, so a careful workshop will tell you the frame has to be replaced before any spring goes in.
A sofa bed deck is a steel link mesh held by 20 to 30 tension springs around its edge, and those, not the mesh, let go. A recliner seat is a serpentine unit on a steel seat box, with separate tension springs in the mechanism. An antique is coils on webbing, and the rule there is keep the coils.
On a recliner, a "broken leaf spring" is normally a snapped or unhooked tension spring in the mechanism, or a serpentine clip pulled out of the steel seat box. Both are repairable with the back off, and we service the mechanism while it is open. In a recliner, suspect the mechanism before the seat: it is the part that moves. A three-seater with two recliners is heavy, so we confirm pickup or an in-place look with you when we quote; the repair itself is bench work, because the seat box has to come out to reach the clips.
On antiques we replace the webbing and the cord and keep the coils. Coils from Victorian settees well over a century old routinely go back in on new webbing and cord. Swapping hand-tied coils for zigzag in a period frame changes how it sits and takes value off it. The coils are the one part of an antique seat that has usually not aged.
Good to know
Three types. Serpentine or zigzag springs are lengths of heavy wire bent into a continuous S shape, clipped front to back across the seat, and are in most lounges made since the 1980s. Coil springs are double-cone steel springs sewn to jute webbing and hand-tied with cord, found in older and better-made pieces. Pocket springs are small coils sealed in fabric sleeves inside loose cushions and some backs. Many sofas use two systems: a serpentine base under pocket-sprung cushions is common.
Hand-tied coils give a deeper, more even seat and last longer when properly tied, which is why they are in antiques and quality Australian-made lounges. Zigzag springs are cheaper, faster to fit, suit shallow modern frames and are perfectly good when clipped into sound hardwood. Neither is wrong in the right frame. On the bench we keep coils where they exist, fit zigzag where a design calls for it, and web the seat when the piece is too shallow or light for either.
Both describe how many times cord passes and knots over each coil. Eight-way ties every coil front to back, side to side and across both diagonals, knotted on both sides of the spring. Nine-way adds a tie that locks the crown of each coil to its neighbours. We tie nine ways because the extra tie stops the row walking sideways under heavy use, which is what makes a coil seat go lumpy over the years.
Usually, yes. Most spring repairs are done from underneath with the cover left on. A dropped clip on a sound rail is refitted in under an hour at the bench; when the piece comes back depends on the booking and on any fabric being recovered. A split rail or a row of dropped springs means stripping the seat to the frame, but a cover in good condition can usually be lifted and put back. Reupholstery is only needed when the cover itself is worn or stretched.
Because the spring almost certainly did not snap. The clip holding it fatigued, its staples pulled out of the rail, or the rail split along the grain. The wire is intact, it has simply dropped. Roughly four times in five that is what we find when we open a seat described as having a broken spring. Genuine wire breakage happens with rust or a sharp kink at the clip, and then the spring is replaced, not reattached.
No. A board under the cushions takes the springs out of the job and sends your full weight into the rails and the cushion foam. The seat feels firmer for a few weeks, then the foam, which was designed to work on a sprung base, compresses flat against the hard one and is finished. The board also rocks on whichever springs are still up and splits the front rail. Every board we have removed had dead foam above it and a worse frame below it.
Not for long. A zip tie or tie wire pulls a dropped spring up to its neighbours, which loads the clips next door with the weight of two springs, and nylon stretches and cuts under repeated sitting. In our experience the fix lasts about a month, and by the time the piece reaches us the next two clips have gone as well. The real repair is a new clip screwed into sound timber, and a rail repair if the staples pulled out because the rail had split.
Tight enough to arch upward 25 to 40 mm at the centre of the seat with no load, which usually means cutting each spring about 5 to 8 per cent shorter than the straight distance between the front and back rails. Too tight and the seat feels like a board and tears the clips out of the rails. Too loose and it hammocks. Every spring in a row should sit at the same height, linked with helical springs so they move together.
A spring showing underneath means a clip has let go and the spring has dropped through the dust cover; the fabric has not failed, the fixing has. A spring felt or seen through the top means the padding over the springs has worn through, usually the hessian and the insulator layer, so the foam is sitting straight on the wire. A coil poking through a cushion is a torn pocket in a pocket-spring unit. Each is a different repair, and only the top one involves the cover.
A sprung seat moves vertically and gives deeply, so you sink into it and it slowly returns. A webbed seat is elastic strapping stretched across the frame, so it feels flatter and firmer and the cushion foam does most of the comfort work. Neither is better by itself. Deep lounges and antiques want springs. Shallow seats, dining chairs, and mid-century pieces with thin cushions want webbing, because there is no room under the cushion for the 25 to 40 mm crown a spring needs.
A sofa bed has two spring systems. The fold-out deck is a steel link mesh held under tension by tension springs hooked around its perimeter; those stretch and unhook over time, so the bed hammocks in the middle, and they are replaced individually with the mechanism open and the cover usually untouched. The thin mattress on top is normally pocket sprung and is swapped as a complete unit when it has gone. The seat cushions above the mechanism are a separate job again.
Yes. Upholstery suppliers sell serpentine spring by the roll in 9-gauge for seats and lighter gauges for backs, along with clips, helical links and edge wire, plus coil springs and laid cord for traditional work. The spring is the easy part. Cutting to length for the right crown, fixing clips into timber that will hold, linking the row so it moves together and repairing the rail the old clip pulled out of is where a seat is won or lost, and that is worth paying a workshop for.
Send a photo or the dimensions of your booths, banquettes or venue seating and we'll come back with a rough price and turnaround.
Send us the drawings or details and we'll come back with a straight quote, no clout needed, just a great job.
Enquire about a job Call 0425 832 619