Sofas, sectionals, chairs and mattresses cleaned to the code on the manufacturer's tag — because the wrong method on the wrong fabric does damage no cleaning undoes.
Reviewed and updated .
Upholstery is where carpet cleaners get themselves into trouble, and it is worth understanding why before you hire anybody. A carpet is one material, fitted flat, over a pad, in a room with a floor underneath it. A sofa is several fabrics stretched over foam and a wooden frame, with dye, backing, filling and trim that can all react differently to the same solution. Using carpet pressure and carpet flow on a sofa is not a shortcut — it is how furniture gets ruined.
The soil is different too. What is in a carpet is mostly dry particulate walked in from outside. What is in a sofa is mostly you: skin oil, sweat, hair product, sunscreen and lotion, concentrated exactly where people rest their heads, hands and arms. That is an oily soil rather than a gritty one, and it needs chemistry aimed at oil and time to work, not more water.
The good news is that the manufacturer already told you which method is safe. There is a tag on your furniture with a letter on it, and that letter is the single most important thing about cleaning the piece. Most people have never looked at it.
One letter decides the whole approach. Getting it wrong is not a poor result, it is damage.
| Code | Means | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| W | Water-based cleaning | Water-based solutions are safe. This is the most common code on modern synthetic upholstery and the one that takes hot water extraction well. Over-wetting is still the thing to avoid. |
| S | Solvent only | Must be cleaned with a water-free solvent — dry cleaning, in effect. Water on an S-coded fabric is how you get rings, shrinkage and browning. A cleaner who arrives with only a water system cannot do this piece. |
| WS | Either method | Written W/S or SW. Both water-based and solvent methods are permitted, so the choice comes down to the fiber, the soil and the risk. Most professional jobs on WS fabric still use a low-moisture approach. |
| X | Vacuum only | No water, no solvent. Vacuuming and light brushing only. Anything wet on an X-coded fabric risks shrinking, staining or distorting it, and an honest cleaner will decline the piece rather than try. |
Where to find it: under a seat cushion, on the underside of the frame, or on the deck beneath the cushions. If you want a faster quote, look now and tell us the letter when you call.
And if there is no tag? That is common on reupholstered pieces, antiques and imported furniture. In that case the fiber gets identified by inspection and a colorfast test is run on a hidden area — inside a skirt, under a cushion, behind the deck — before any solution touches a visible surface. Where the fiber cannot be identified with confidence, the conservative method is used or the piece is declined. Guessing on someone's sofa is not a thing we do.
| Fabric | Typical code | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Polyester and microfiber | Usually W or WS | The workhorse of modern furniture. Takes extraction well, releases soil readily, and dries fast. Microfiber can water-spot if it dries unevenly, so the whole panel gets cleaned rather than just the mark. |
| Olefin / polypropylene | Usually W | Very stain resistant to water-based spills, but it holds oily soil and it wicks. Common on family sofas and outdoor-style pieces. |
| Cotton and cotton blends | Often WS, sometimes S | Natural cellulose, so it can shrink and it is prone to browning if it stays wet. Low moisture and controlled drying rather than a soaking. |
| Linen | Often S or X | Beautiful and unforgiving. Shrinks, water-marks easily, and browns. Frequently a solvent-only fabric, and sometimes one nobody should be wetting at all. |
| Velvet and chenille | Varies — check the tag | The risk is not cleaning, it is pile crush and watermarking. Direction of the pile matters, and the piece has to be groomed as it dries or it sets marked. |
| Wool and wool blends | Usually S or WS | Lower heat and a different pH, or it felts and the color moves. The same rules as a wool rug. |
| Silk and viscose / rayon | Usually S or X | Viscose in particular is notorious — it loses strength when wet and water-marks almost on contact. Often the honest answer is that it should not be wet-cleaned. |
| Leather and vinyl | Not an extraction job | Cleaned and conditioned rather than extracted. Different chemistry and a different process entirely — see below. |
Typical does not mean certain — the tag on your piece beats any general rule, and a blend can behave like its most delicate component.
Priced per piece. Fabric, size, cushion count and soil level decide where in each range you land.
| Piece | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Three-seat sofa | $100–$150 | The most common piece. Fabric, cushion count and soil level decide where in the range. |
| Loveseat | $80–$110 | Two seats plus back and arms. |
| Sectional | Priced by section | Quoted on the number of seats rather than as one item. A large L-shape is effectively two sofas. |
| Armchair | $50–$70 | Priced per chair. Usually added to another piece rather than booked alone. |
| Recliner | $60–$80 | More seams, more mechanism to work around, and a headrest carrying most of the body oil. |
| Chaise or daybed | $70–$100 | One long cushion, and usually the piece the household actually lies on. |
| Ottoman or footstool | $25–$40 | Small, and almost always added to another job. |
| Dining chairs, seat pads | $15–$25 each | Per chair. A set of six is a sensible add-on to a carpet cleaning. |
| Dining chairs, fully upholstered | $25–$40 each | Back and sides as well as the seat. |
| Mattress | $60–$120 | By size. Skin cells, sweat and dust mites — the soft furnishing almost nobody ever cleans. |
| Fabric headboard | $30–$60 | Hair product and body oil collect here more than people expect. |
A $60 minimum applies to a standalone visit, so small items are usually best added to a carpet cleaning — travel and setup are then paid once. See the full pricing guide.
The cleaning code decides the method before anything else does. Where there is no tag — reupholstered pieces, antiques, anything imported — the fiber is identified by inspection and a colorfast test is run on a hidden area. Nobody should be putting solution on your sofa without doing this first.
Upholstery vacuuming with a proper tool and a crevice attachment, into the seams and under the cushions. Hair, grit and crumbs come out dry, before any moisture turns them into something worse.
Most upholstery soil is body oil, sunscreen, hair product and skin cells, concentrated at headrests, arm tops and the front edge of cushions. That is a different soil from carpet grit and it needs a pre-spray aimed at it, with dwell time.
A hand tool with far lower pressure and flow than a carpet wand, matched to the code — hot water extraction on W and many WS fabrics, low-moisture or solvent where the tag or the fiber says so. The aim is a clean panel that never becomes saturated.
Pile fabrics are groomed in one direction so they do not dry marked. Air movers are set on the piece rather than leaving it to dry on its own, because on upholstery slow drying is what causes rings, browning and odor.
Cushions turned, seams checked, and anything that did not come out pointed out rather than left for you to find. On upholstery more than carpet, the honest conversation happens at the end as well as the start.
No line items appear for these.
Agreed before work begins.
On upholstery the window is shorter than on carpet, because there is foam underneath waiting to absorb it.
Red wine, coffee, ink, nail polish and anything with dye in it are worth a phone call while still damp rather than an experiment. So is anything on a fabric you cannot identify.
This is the single most common way people damage their own sofa, and the reasoning is completely understandable: the cover has a zipper, so it must come off to be washed. It usually does not. The zipper is there so the cover can be fitted over the foam at the factory and removed for reupholstery, not so it can go through a wash cycle.
Four things go wrong, and they compound:
If your care label explicitly permits machine washing, then it permits it — wash cool, skip the dryer, and put the covers back on slightly damp so they dry to shape. If the label says anything else, or there is no label, the cover gets cleaned on the cushion, which is the whole point of cleaning upholstery in place.
Every one of these is preventable, and every one of them is why method selection matters more here than on carpet.
Cotton, linen and jute contain natural compounds that migrate with moisture and oxidize as they dry, leaving a yellow-brown cast — often worst at the edges of the damp area. It is caused by slow drying more than by the cleaning itself, which is why moisture control and airflow matter more on upholstery than anywhere else.
Natural fibers shrink when wet, and upholstery is fabric stretched over a frame with nowhere to go. A cotton or linen cover can pull tight at the seams and never fully recover. This is the main reason those fabrics get low moisture or solvent rather than extraction.
Loose dye moves when it gets wet, and on a two-tone piece or a piece with contrast piping it moves somewhere you will see it. The colorfast test at the start is what catches this, and it is why a test on a hidden area is not optional.
Cleaning part of a panel leaves a boundary where the wet area met the dry one, and on some fabrics that edge dries visible. The fix is to clean the whole panel to its seams every time, not the mark.
Velvet, chenille and similar pile fabrics take a permanent set if they dry flattened or in mixed directions. Grooming while damp is what prevents it, and it cannot be corrected once dry.
Foam holds water and a soaked core takes days to dry, which in Aiken's humidity means odor and possibly mold inside a cushion nobody can see. Any method that saturates a seat cushion is the wrong method, whatever the fabric code says.
It exists, it works after a fashion, and here is exactly where the gap is.
| Rental machine | Professional | |
|---|---|---|
| Suction and recovery | A household or rental upholstery tool recovers a fraction of what it puts in, so the cushion stays wet for a day or more. | A professional hand tool is matched to low flow and high vacuum, so the panel is damp rather than saturated and dries in hours. |
| Method selection | One method, whatever the tag says. Rental machines are water-based, so an S or X piece has no safe option. | Method chosen from the code and the fiber, with a colorfast test before anything reaches a visible surface. |
| Heat and pressure | Fixed, and generally aimed at carpet. Too much of either distorts fabric and sets protein staining. | Controlled and adjusted to the fabric. Wool and delicate synthetics get lower heat by default. |
| The oily soil | Detergent and water on body oil without dwell time lifts very little of it. | An oil-targeted pre-spray with real dwell time, which is the step that actually cleans a headrest. |
| Drying | Left to the room. In Aiken humidity a wet foam core can take days, which is how a clean sofa ends up musty. | Air movers set on the piece before we leave, plus grooming on pile fabrics so they do not dry marked. |
| What it costs | $40–$50 for a rental day plus solution, plus your afternoon, plus the risk on an untested fabric. | $60–$150 for the piece, done once, with the fabric identified first. |
The honest summary: on a W-coded synthetic sofa with light soil, a rental will improve it. The risk is everything else — an unidentified fabric, an S or X code, a natural fiber that browns, or a foam core that stays wet for three days in an Aiken August.
| Setting | How it is priced | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Office task chairs | Per chair, quoted in volume | Fabric seats and backs collect body oil the same way a sofa does, and they are the item nobody in an office has ever cleaned. Priced per chair with a rate that falls sharply above about ten. |
| Reception and waiting-room seating | Per piece | First thing a visitor sits on and looks at. Medical and dental waiting rooms usually want a sanitizing step as well as cleaning. |
| Restaurant booths and banquettes | By linear foot or per booth | Vinyl and fabric, food soil and grease rather than body oil, and scheduled around service hours. |
| Church pew cushions and hall seating | Per pew or per run | Long runs of cushion that see heavy weekly use and rarely get cleaned. Usually done midweek. |
| Salon, studio and gym seating | Per piece | Product residue, hair color and perspiration. Different soil again, and vinyl is common. |
| Short-term rental furnishings | Per property | Turnover work between guests, scheduled the same way as move-out cleaning and invoiced per property. |
Commercial upholstery is quoted per item with a rate that falls with volume, and scheduled around your hours rather than ours. See commercial cleaning.
Outdoor and porch furniture. Aiken's outdoor season is long enough that patio cushions get a full year of use, and what accumulates on them is different again — pollen, mildew from humidity, sunscreen and general grime rather than body oil. Solution-dyed acrylics such as Sunbrella are built for this and clean up well; cheaper polyester outdoor fabric fades and can be past saving. Screened porches in particular collect a green pollen film every spring that most people just live with.
Mildew is the honest caveat. Surface mildew on outdoor fabric usually cleans off. Mildew that has grown into the foam of a cushion left wet through a season has stained and colonized the filling, and cleaning the cover does not fix that — the insert needs replacing. You will be told which one you have.
Leather is not fabric with a different code — it is a different material that fails in a different way, and extraction has no place on it. What soils a leather sofa is body oil and perspiration working into the finish at the head and arm contact points, plus dye transfer from denim on the seats. What ruins one is drying it out, stripping the finish, or using a household product with alcohol or a degreaser in it.
The right approach is cleaning with a pH-appropriate leather product and then conditioning to put back what the cleaning and the years took out. Finished, semi-aniline and aniline leathers behave differently and the last of those absorbs almost anything you put on it, so identifying which you have comes first — the same principle as reading a fabric code.
Ask when you call and you will get a straight answer about whether your piece is a good fit for us or better sent to a leather specialist. What will not happen is a fabric method being used on leather because it was already on the truck.
Every 12 to 24 months for a sofa the family actually uses, and longer for a formal piece nobody sits on. The trigger is not how it looks from across the room — upholstery soils evenly and gradually, so the change is invisible until you clean half of it and see the difference. The honest signals are the headrest and arm tops going darker than the rest, and the piece smelling faintly of itself when the room has been shut up.
Waiting matters more here than on carpet, because the soil is oil. Fresh oil sits on the fiber and comes off. Oil left for years oxidizes, darkens and bonds, and at that point cleaning lightens it considerably without fully removing it. That is the difference between a sofa that comes back and one that comes back better.
There is a health side as well, without overstating it. Upholstery holds dust, pollen tracked in on clothes, pet dander, and in a mattress the skin cells that dust mites feed on. It works as a filter in the same way carpet does, and cleaning empties it. It does not make a home allergen-free and nobody should tell you it does.
One thing specific to here: Aiken's humidity means anything that stays damp inside a cushion is a problem. That is true of a spill you blotted and thought you dealt with, and it is true of a cleaning done with too much water and no airflow. If a sofa smelled fine before a cleaning and musty a week after, it was over-wet.
$60 to $150 per piece for most furniture. A three-seat sofa runs $100 to $150, a loveseat $80 to $110, an armchair $50 to $70 and a recliner $60 to $80. Sectionals are quoted by the number of sections rather than as one item. Small items such as dining chairs and ottomans are priced individually and normally added to another job, because the $60 minimum charge applies to a standalone visit.
They are the manufacturer's cleaning code and they decide the method. W means water-based cleaning is safe. S means solvent only, no water. WS or W/S means either is permitted. X means vacuum only — no water and no solvent. The tag is usually under a seat cushion, beneath the frame, or on the underside of the deck.
Common on reupholstered pieces, antiques and imported furniture. In that case the fiber is identified by inspection and a colorfast test is run on a hidden area before anything else happens. Where the fiber cannot be identified confidently, the conservative method gets used or the piece gets declined — guessing on someone's sofa is not acceptable.
Not wet, no. X means vacuum and light brushing only, and putting water or solvent on it risks shrinking, staining or distorting the fabric permanently. If your piece is X-coded you will be told that rather than sold a cleaning that damages it.
Two to six hours for most pieces with proper extraction and airflow — faster than carpet, because there is less material and air reaches both sides. Aiken humidity stretches it. Air movers are set on the piece rather than leaving it to dry by itself, since slow drying is what causes rings and browning.
Not on synthetics, which is most modern furniture. Natural fibers — cotton, linen — genuinely can shrink, and upholstery is fabric stretched over a frame with nowhere to give. That is exactly why those fabrics get low moisture or solvent rather than a soaking, and why the code is read before the method is chosen.
Natural cellulose fibers such as cotton, linen and jute contain compounds that travel with moisture and oxidize as they dry, leaving a yellow-brown cast, usually worst at the edges of the damp area. It is caused by staying wet too long rather than by cleaning as such. Controlled moisture and forced airflow are what prevent it.
That is the main job on most sofas. Head and arm contact points collect skin oil, hair product and sunscreen, and it is a different soil from ordinary dirt — it needs a pre-spray aimed at oil with real dwell time rather than a wet pass. Long-standing oil that has darkened the fabric may lighten considerably without disappearing completely.
Leather is cleaned and conditioned rather than extracted — different chemistry, different process. Ask when you call and you will get a straight answer about whether your piece is a good fit. What we will not do is put a fabric method on leather.
Yes, $60 to $120 depending on size. Mattresses collect skin cells, sweat and dust mites, and they are the one soft furnishing almost nobody ever cleans. Allow longer drying than a sofa and plan to leave it stripped overnight.
Every 12 to 24 months for a family sofa in daily use, longer for a formal piece nobody sits on. The signal is not how it looks — it is the headrest and arm tops darkening, or the piece smelling of itself when the room is closed up. Oil that has been in the fabric for years is harder to remove than oil that has been there for one.
Often, and it depends how far it went — the same principle as carpet. Surface odor comes out with the cleaning. Urine that soaked into a cushion core is a different problem, because foam holds it and a saturated core cannot be flushed the way carpet backing can. Sometimes the cushion insert has to be replaced. See pet stain and odor removal.
It is usually a bad idea. Cleaning part of a piece leaves a clean patch against a dirtier background, and cleaning part of a panel can dry with a visible tide line. The standard approach is to clean at least to the nearest seams, and normally the whole piece.
The solutions are chosen with that in mind and the process removes them rather than leaving them in the fabric. Keep pets and children off the piece until it is dry. If there is a specific sensitivity in the household, say so when booking.
Yes, on suitable fabrics, applied after cleaning while the fiber is open. It buys time to blot a spill before it soaks in, which on a light-colored family sofa is usually worth it. On an X-coded or delicate piece it may not be appropriate. See stain protection.
Yes, and it costs less than two separate trips because travel and setup are paid once. Carpet plus upholstery is the most common pairing we do. See the pricing guide.
No. Pieces are cleaned where they stand, with protection under the feet where needed. Clearing personal items off and around the furniture helps, and if a piece needs to come away from a wall for access that gets done as part of the job.
Almost always no, even though they have zippers. The zipper is for fitting the cover over the foam at the factory, not for laundering. Covers shrink at machine temperatures and then will not go back on, the backing or stain-resist finish can wash out, and washing the cushions but not the frame gives you uneven fading — clean cushions that no longer match the sofa they sit on. If your care label explicitly permits washing, wash cool, skip the dryer, and put them back on slightly damp so they dry to shape.
On a W-coded synthetic sofa with light soil, it will improve things. The problem is everything else. A rental recovers a fraction of what it puts in, so a foam core can stay wet for days — which in Aiken humidity is how a clean sofa turns musty. It offers one method regardless of the tag, so an S or X piece has no safe option. And it does very little to body oil without a proper pre-spray and dwell time.
Roughly 30 to 45 minutes for a three-seat sofa, less for a chair, longer for a sectional or a piece with heavy oil at the headrests. Add time where a pre-spray needs dwell time to work — that pause is doing the cleaning, not wasting your morning.
Fish out whatever is down the sides Take cushions covers' contents out — remote controls, coins, pens, anything down the sides — and clearmdash; remote controls, coins, pens Take cushions covers' contents out — remote controls, coins, pens, anything down the sides — and clearmdash; and clear the surface of throws, pillows and blankets. Tell us if you know where the tag is. Nothing else; the piece is cleaned where it stands and protection goes under the feet.
Microfiber shows a boundary wherever a wet area met a dry one, because the fine fibers dry standing slightly differently. It is not damage and it is not permanent, but it is why cleaning one spot on microfiber is a bad idea — the fix is to clean the whole panel to its seams so there is no boundary to see. Brushing the panel in one direction as it dries evens it out.
Yes. Patio cushions collect pollen, mildew, sunscreen and general grime rather than body oil, and solution-dyed acrylics such as Sunbrella clean up well. The caveat is mildew: surface mildew on the fabric usually comes off, but mildew grown into the foam of a cushion left wet through a season means the insert needs replacing, and cleaning the cover will not fix it.
Yes. Commercial upholstery is quoted per item with a rate that falls with volume, and scheduled around your hours rather than ours. Office task chairs, waiting-room seating, booths, pew cushions and salon or gym seating are all normal work. Medical and dental waiting rooms usually want a sanitizing step as well.
Not while they are hanging. Drapes need to come down and go to a specialist who can handle the lining and the drop without shrinking them. If you want the room done, the upholstery and carpet are what we take care of.
You will be told which marks are likely to be permanent before work starts rather than after. Dye damage, sun fading and old oil that has darkened the fabric are not soil, and no cleaning returns them. What you get is an honest assessment first and no charge invented afterwards for the ones that did not move.
Tell us the letter on the tag, the pieces and the fabric, and you'll get a straight range on the phone — including if the honest answer is that your piece should not be wet-cleaned.
Rather write? Email carpetcleaningaiken@gmail.com.
