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Is It Always A Bad Idea To Buy A White Couch?

By Jeff Frank

Are white couches a bad idea?

There is a new category of fabrics, known as “high performance fabrics,” that has become increasingly popular over the past five years.

At this point, sales of high performance fabrics are already beginning to overtake microfibers among U.S. furniture manufacturers.

High performance fabrics have built-in permanent stain protection. Although there are several different technologies, using different types of fibers and fiber blends, all are highly stain-resistant and easy to clean. Some are virtually stain-proof.

This has made white fabrics far more practical than they used to be

There are several different high performance brand names now available, in a wide range of prices. Many are made in the USA

The best known premium quality high performance brands are Crypton and Sunbrella. Bella-Dura is another high quality (expensive) high performance brand.

At the lower range of the price scale, priced just above inexpensive microfibers, are high performance brands such as Revolution and LiveSmart.

At this point, nearly every upholstery manufacturer offers one or more of these high performance fabric brands.

A few years ago, in my upholstery factory, we had a white high performance fabric that had been run over by a forklift, leaving a very thick black, oily stain.

  • As an experiment we tried to get the stain out using dish soap and water.
  • We were able to get almost all of the stain out of the fabric. If we had taken more time, or used more sophisticated cleaning methods, it is possible we could have completely removed all traces of the oily stain.

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