Guide · upholstery in Melbourne
Steam cleaning suits a short list of W-coded synthetic covers and nothing else. On our bench the aftermath is shrunk linen panels, delaminated backings, crushed velvet pile and glue lines that have let go. Steam cleans about the top 5 millimetres of a seat and wets the other hundred. Smell, urine and mould live in the foam, so no surface clean reaches them. Check the cleaning code first.
Last updated: October 2026
Get a free quoteCall 0425 832 619A steam cleaner pushes moisture at close to 100 degrees into the cover and pulls very little back out. A sofa seat is a cover, a 10 to 20 millimetre polyester wrap, then 100 to 120 millimetres of open-cell foam, held together with contact adhesive. Steam reaches the cover; the water goes everywhere else.
A true steamer has no suction worth the name; hot water extraction recovers perhaps half of what it sprays.
When we open a sofa that was machine cleaned a week earlier, the foam is still damp in the centre. Open-cell foam holds water and dries from the outside in, which inside a closed cover takes days. The contact adhesive softens, so the cover is no longer attached to anything underneath.
Steam is a tool for sanitising a hard surface. A sofa is a sponge in a jumper.
Natural fibre covers shrink, backed fabrics delaminate and loose weaves watermark. Linen, cotton and viscose blends lose 2 to 5 per cent of their length when wet with heat, so a 60 centimetre seat panel comes back 2 to 3 centimetres short. Piping pulls, zips will not close and a fitted cover cannot be stretched back.
The shrunk linen lounge is the one we see most: one cushion steamed, and three days later it would not go back on the foam, because a cover is cut to within 5 millimetres of the foam and a 3 per cent shrink uses all of that.
Delamination is quieter. Many jacquards, chenilles and boucles carry a latex or acrylic backing that holds the weave stable. Heat and water soften it, the fabric bubbles and goes limp, and on the bench we can peel the two layers apart with a fingernail. Nothing re-sticks them.
| Fabric type | Usual cleaning code | What steam or hot extraction does | Reversible? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linen, cotton, viscose blends | S or WS | Shrinks 2 to 5 per cent, piping pulls, covers no longer fit | No, recover |
| Backed jacquard, chenille, boucle | S or WS | Backing delaminates, face bubbles, seams pucker | No, recover |
| Wool, silk, silk velvet | S or X | Felts or watermarks, dye bleed, pile crush | No, recover |
| Polyester, acrylic, olefin weaves | W | Usually fine with low moisture, strong suction, fan drying | Generally yes |
An S on the label means the fabric was never designed to be wet, and the mill wrote that down for a reason.
Steam flattens velvet pile in whichever direction the wand travels, and it does not stand back up. Velvet gets its colour from light bouncing off upright fibres. Lay them flat and the same dye reads darker, blotchy and striped. On cotton and viscose velvet this is permanent. On polyester velvet it is partly recoverable, never fully.
A vintage deep brown velvet three seater, cleaned with a hired steamer, is the enquiry that stays with us: the pile had been pressed flat and heat set, and the brown read as three browns depending on where you stood.
Roughly two in three steamed velvets that reach our Eltham North workshop are cotton or viscose pile, not polyester, and upholstery pile is only 2 to 3 millimetres tall, so there is little fibre to stand back up. Cotton velvet dye also moves when wet and hot, so the mark is a real colour change on top of the pile change. Viscose velvet goes limp and shiny. After that the piece is a recover in new velvet: the answer most owners did not want and the only honest one.
A velvet that has been steamed does not come back. The pile remembers.
Leather, vinyl, bonded leather and coated fabrics should never be steamed. Heat and moisture strip the oils from leather and lift its pigmented topcoat, soften vinyl so it dulls and crazes, and speed up the peeling bonded and PU leather were going to do anyway. The right clean for all four is a damp cloth and mild soap.
Leather is a skin. Steam opens the grain, drives out the tannery's oils, and the hide dries stiff and cracks along every fold. On pigmented leather, the usual lounge leather, the colour is a thin coating that we see lift in sheets after a steam clean.
Bonded and PU leather are a plastic film over a fabric backing. Steam cooks it, and the peeling that would have taken three years takes three weeks. A steamed peeling couch is a recover, and the leather versus vinyl guide covers what it goes back in.
Vinyl, including the Austex commercial-grade vinyl we use on venue and healthcare seating, is wipeable by design. Steam softens the plasticisers and leaves a dull, tacky patch, and coated faux suedes lose the coating that made them easy to live with.
If a cover wipes clean with a damp cloth, that is the clean it was built for. A machine is not an upgrade.
Smell is never on the surface of a sofa. Urine wicks through the cover into the foam, dries to uric salt crystals and reactivates whenever humidity rises, which in a Melbourne winter is most mornings. Smoke tar coats every surface including the inside of the frame. Mould grows in any open-cell foam that stays wet past about 48 hours.
Cleaning the cover of a smelly seat makes it worse. The water carries the dissolved salts deeper into the foam, which stays damp for days, and the smell returns with a mould note on top. Nearly every pet-damage enquiry we get says the same thing: cleaned twice, worse each time.
A decade of cigarette tar is in the foam, the hessian, the webbing and the raw timber. Deodorisers and ozone treatments reach the cover only.
The only fix for all three is the same: strip the cover, bin the foam and wrap, clean and seal the frame, rebuild with new Dunlop HR35 foam and a new cover. That rebuild is detailed on the cushion refoaming page.
You cannot wash a sponge from the outside.
A hardwood frame usually survives a flood if it is dried within a few days. Foam, wrap, webbing, hessian and cover almost never do. Bed bugs live in seams, staple lines and frame cracks, so a recover alone does not remove them. Tell any workshop about either before booking, because whether they can accept it changes completely.
With water damage the clock matters more than the water. Clean rainwater or a burst pipe gives about 48 hours before the foam starts growing mould. Grey water from a washing machine or stormwater is a strip-and-rebuild from the first hour. Black water is a frame-only salvage at best.
In the first day: get the piece off the wet floor, stand cushions on edge with air moving, photograph everything for insurance, and keep heaters away, because hardwood that dries too fast splits. Particleboard and MDF swell and are finished; a careful workshop will tell you a swollen particleboard frame is not worth rebuilding, and we confirm what we can take on when we quote.
A week after a flood, the pieces that reach our bench all look the same: jute webbing gone black and slack, hessian that tears like wet paper, staples rusting into the rail. All three go in the bin; the hardwood underneath is usually sound.
Steam kills bed bugs on contact but cannot reach the frame cavities; a pest controller's heat treatment, holding the whole piece above about 45 degrees for several hours, is the only method that reaches everywhere. A careful workshop will ask for proof of treatment and may decline a piece without it. We confirm what we need when we quote.
Honesty at the quote stage costs nothing and saves a workshop quarantining its bench.
The cleaning code on the fabric label decides the method: W is water-based, S is solvent only, WS is either with care, X is vacuum only. A weekly vacuum removes the grit that cuts fibres. For S and WS fabrics, professional low-moisture dry extraction is the safe version of a steam clean.
Spill handling fabric by fabric is on the care page. The short version: blot, never rub, nothing wet on an S fabric, and red wine on velvet goes to a dry solvent clean, never salt or soda water.
The best upholstery steam cleaner for a sofa is the one left in the hire shop. If you must hire one for a W-coded polyester lounge, choose a low-moisture upholstery unit over a carpet machine and fan dry the cushions on edge for 24 hours.
Call an upholsterer instead of a cleaner when:
A cleaner buys a season. A recover buys a decade. What a recover costs comes down to fabric, size and what we find once it is open. Send us a photo and we will tell you which one you need.
Good to know
Only if the new fabric carries a W cleaning code and the cover is a fully synthetic weave, and even then with low moisture and strong suction rather than a true steamer. Most reupholstery fabrics are S or WS coded and will shrink, watermark or delaminate. Ask your upholsterer for the fabric's code when the job is finished and keep it. A reupholstered sofa does not need a deep clean in its first few years; a weekly vacuum keeps the grit out of the weave.
Linen, cotton, viscose, rayon and wool shrink, typically 2 to 5 per cent, which is enough to stop a fitted cushion cover going back on. Backed fabrics such as jacquards, chenilles and boucles delaminate when the latex or acrylic backing softens and lets go of the face cloth. Silk and any viscose velvet watermark and crush. Polyester, acrylic and olefin weaves with a W code are the only group that reliably survive a careful low-moisture clean.
Usually not. The dye is still there; the pile has been pressed flat and set by the heat, so light reflects differently and the same colour reads darker and patchy. On polyester velvet, dry brushing in the nap direction recovers a little. On cotton or viscose velvet, which is what most vintage lounges carry, the change is permanent and often includes real dye movement. The practical fix is a recover in a new velvet, and the frame and foam underneath are usually fine.
No. Steam strips the oils from leather, lifts the pigmented topcoat and leaves the hide stiff and prone to cracking. Vinyl softens under heat and comes back dull and slightly tacky. Bonded and PU leather peel faster after any heat. All four are wipe-clean surfaces: a cloth, warm water with a little mild soap, then a dry towel. Leather also benefits from a conditioner once or twice a year. If a hide is already cracked or a bonded leather is peeling, a recover is the fix, not a clean.
Water moves through fabric as it dries and carries dissolved soil, old finish and sometimes dye to the edge of the wet area, where it stops and concentrates as the last part to dry. That edge is the tide line. Loose weaves, viscose blends and velvets show it worst. Re-wetting the whole panel evenly and drying it fast with moving air can soften a mark on a W-code synthetic. On a natural fibre or velvet, the mark is permanent and the panel is a recover.
Dry cleaning, meaning solvent or low-moisture dry foam extraction, is safer on almost every upholstery fabric because it leaves the foam dry and does not shrink natural fibres or soften backings. Hot water extraction is only appropriate on W-coded synthetic covers and should still be done with the least water the machine allows and strong suction. A professional upholstery cleaner who asks for the cleaning code before quoting is the one to use. A hired carpet machine with an upholstery wand is the one to avoid.
There is no curing period on the fabric itself, but there is no reason to deep clean a new cover for at least the first year or two if it is vacuumed weekly and spills are blotted straight away. When the time comes, use the cleaning code on the fabric label and a cleaner who works to it. Any fabric protector should go on before the sofa is used, not after a clean, and it buys blotting time on a spill rather than replacing the cleaning code.
Not from the inside. Smoke tar coats the cover, but it also soaks into the foam, polyester wrap, hessian, webbing and the raw timber of the frame, and a decade of smoking fills a seat the way it fills a range hood filter. Surface cleaning, deodoriser sprays and ozone treatment freshen the cover for a week or two and the smell returns. The real fix is stripping to the frame, cleaning and sealing the timber, then new foam and a new cover.
The hardwood frame usually can, if it is dried slowly within a few days and was clean or grey water. The foam, wrap, webbing and cover almost never can, because open-cell foam that stays wet past about 48 hours grows mould through. Black water or sewage makes it a frame-only salvage at best. Photograph everything for insurance before moving it, stand cushions on edge with air moving, and tell the workshop what the water was and how long it sat before you book anything.
Only after a pest controller has treated it, and the workshop must be told first. Bed bugs hide in seams, under staples and in frame cracks, so stripping the cover alone does not clear them and steam cannot reach the cavities. Professional heat treatment, holding the whole piece above about 45 degrees for hours, is the method that works. Expect any careful workshop to ask for confirmation of treatment and to decline an untreated piece. We confirm what we need with you when we quote.
Blot straight away with a dry white cloth, lifting rather than rubbing, until nothing more transfers. Do not use water, salt or soda water on velvet; they drive the tannin into the pile and leave a tide line and crushed patch bigger than the stain. Book a professional dry solvent clean within a day or two and tell them the fibre. Polyester velvet usually comes up well. Cotton and viscose velvet often keep a shadow, and a stained seat panel can be recovered on its own.
Rarely. Hire units are carpet machines with an upholstery wand: high water volume, weak recovery, and no way to control temperature on the fabric. On a W-coded polyester lounge, used with minimal water and a full day of fan drying, they can be acceptable. On linen, cotton, velvet, wool, any backed fabric, leather or vinyl, they cause the shrinkage, delamination, crush and peeling we see on the bench every month. Check the cleaning code first, and if it is not a W, leave the machine in the shop.
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