Pale sofa covering practical?

We are in the process of buying a new sofa at the moment, and are very tempted by a pale cream coloured fabric. However, we have never had such a light coloured piece of furniture and are concerned about the practicality of keeping it clean (heart says go for the cream, head says go for something darker for practicality).

We plan to get it with removable covers, so that they can be dry cleaned, but this probably makes a finish such as Scothgard not worth the extra expense (I believe that the first time the fabric passes through the dry cleaners you lose the Scotchgard finish - am I right in believing that?). Even with removable covers, we obviously don't want to have to get it cleaned every few weeks.

We don't have kids, and the sofa would get light to moderate use. The material we are looking at is a commercial grade (75,000 rubs) although I can't see that that would have much impact on its resistance to picking up dirt.

It would be helpful to know whether anyone that has had a pale-coloured sofa themselves found it very difficult to keep clean - can anyone comment from their own experiences?

Thanks.

Hi,

Would have to say it sounds lovely but I would definitely not go for it but then I'm too practical for my own good. I think you are probably right on the dry cleaning aspect of the Scotchgard and would have to wonder about the cost of the constant cleaning. Would it definitely not shrink over a period of time also with all the cleaning?

Understand your desire for pale..I always drift towards those in furniture shops too! I bought a pale white/cream leather sofa recently as I was put off the pale fabric ones by my mother who pointed out that although you can remove and clean the covers, they do shrink slightly and when it comes to putting them back on, they never look quite the same as they did when the sofa was new i.e. they just don't seem to fit as snugly as before.
Thats my 5 cents for what its worth!

Hi,

I've lived for 2 years with a cream sofa, and am very happy with it.

I moved into a rented apartment 2 years ago, and since it was not yet furnished by the owner, I asked could he put in very neutral furnishings. Amazingly he put in cream carpets, sofas and curtains!

I found the sofa wears very well. Its a relatively heavy fabric which has a kind-of water-mark, very subtle pattern through it. This means that if a glass of white wine spills, you dont notice any mark.
We wash the covers about every 3 months, and they come up sparkling (even a red wine stain came out completely). Its true as a previous poster said, that they do tend to shrink a bit, but the cushions stretch them out again.

I'd say, if you dont intend it for very heavy usage, go for it!

Thanks for the replies. They are very helpful.

ragazza's experiences are encouraging, but it is a good point to check on potential shrinkage of the material that we are interested in.

Thought about cream sofas for family room as well as beige type carpet but decided to put the money towards some nice holidays instead. Our grandaughter, after eating a little too much chocolate over the Christmas decided to do a Preston and spewed up all over the old suite and floor. In our case not buying cream for the moment worked well. What we did do some years ago and have never regretted it was to purchase a sisal type carpet in two other rooms and put in place very heavy damask extra width natural off white fabric curtains. They look great. Go for it if you will not have any heavy traffic.

Thanks IsleOfMan. We may have to put an embargo on any kids entering our house if we opt for the cream sofa covering - takes me right back to the days of my parents' "good room"

We got cream/neutral covered sofas last summer and use them every night- so far great! I say if you love them, go for them... we cover ours for our own daily use, with very large cream throws--but we remove these if visitors are coming...Good Luck!

Thanks cibby. After much deliberating, we opted for pale grey loose covers. It is still a relatively bright colour, but it should mask some of the daily grime that might build up between washes of the covers.

One thing that was useful was finding that one of the chairs in the showroom was covered in a cream material like the cream that we had in mind. There was a dark stain on the back of the chair where it looked like someone may have rested something briefly. When we were back there a few days later, the stain had been cleaned up, but there was still a grey smudge there which stood out against the cream. When we found that our preferred shade of cream was even paler again, and a similar type of material, it made us re-consider how well we could clean/disguise stains on that particular sofa cover. The pale grey was a compromise, but still looks good (would never have thought I'd opt for grey, personally, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of the available shades are very appealling).

Thanks again for the previous responses.