Upholstered furniture in your workplace is home to many germs, dirt, dust, mould, and allergens. For those of us who have allergies, unclean upholstery can unleash a variety of health issues.
We all come into contact with upholstered furniture in our workplace every single day.
For instance, most of us have fabric office chairs and sofas within our offices.
Yet, for many people, upholstery cleaning is something they never think to have done.
Why is that?
One reason may be simple ignorance — we avoid upholstery cleaning because we don’t know what it is.
Or maybe we think it’s an unnecessary expense.
While vacuuming or wiping down your workplace furniture may tackle day-to-day dirt, professional upholstery cleaning serves as an essential step in deep cleaning and maintaining the life of your upholstered furniture.
So, the question you may be asking is – “what is upholstery cleaning, and how does the process work?”
Well we’ve got you covered. At In-Tec, we perform upholstery cleaning all the time! So we have a pretty good idea of how it all works.
In this article, we’ll explain what upholstery cleaning is, the 5-step process, and finally, explain the benefits of having this clean done on your furniture at least once a year.
What is upholstery cleaning and how does it work?
It’s more than likely that some areas of your workplace have upholstery furniture.
Take a look at the chairs in your office.
Are the seats fabric? Padded?
What about the lounges in your staff breakout areas? Are they the same?
These pieces of furniture in your workplace are all covered with upholstery – fabric, padding, webbing, and springs. All these items make up the soft coverings of chairs, lounges, and other furniture.
This means that upholstery cleaning is (as you might expect it), the process of cleaning the fabric that upholsters your furniture.
But don’t be mistaken. The process is more difficult than it might seem.
Without going into too much detail (because I will be explaining the whole 5-step process further below), let’s talk about how upholstery cleaning works.
At In-Tec, our cleaners use a highly effective method known as hot water extraction. It’s suitable for mixed fibre and synthetic materials and does not compromise the composition of the fabric. Upholstery cleaning is the process of pressurising hot water to penetrate deep into the fabric’s fibres to help soften and loosen embedded dirt, dust, skin cells, stains, and most importantly kill germs, bacteria, and viruses.
It also freshens and prolongs the life of your chairs and/or lounges – no more worrying about replacing the furniture prematurely because it’s looking old and worn!
How to clean upholstery furniture: the process
Upholstery cleaning is just like carpet cleaning.
Huh?
No really, it is!
It’s just a smaller version!
How does the team at In-Tec Commercial Cleaning deep clean upholstery furniture then?
In this section of the article, we’re going to answer just that by going through the entire process from start to finish.
We may get a little technical here so bear with us. We want to get into the nitty gritty of upholstery cleaning so you’ll know exactly what’s involved when your cleaner turns up to your site to conduct this periodical in the future.
1. Prepare the machinery
Instead of fumbling around during the mid-cleaning process, our cleaners prep the machinery first so that they’re ready for what’s to come.
Without going into too much detail, we’ve made a list of all the necessary equipment a cleaner needs when conducting upholstery cleaning.
- Vacuum cleaner with a powerhead attached
- Hot water extraction machine (we use a Steamvac) – including the small handheld wand
- Hot water inline unit (to heat the water)
- Pre-spray unit
- Hoses for the machine to connect to the wand, pre-spray unit, filling and emptying the machine
- Agitators for the stain spotting
- And of course the chemicals needed for the job at hand
The first thing our cleaner prepares is the pre-spray unit and hot water extractor. This involves filling the pre-sprayer with the appropriate chemical and diluting it as necessary and also filling the extractor with water.
Everything’s ready to go!
2. Pre-vacuum the furniture
Before the cleaner begins the hot water extraction process, they need to pre-vacuum the furniture to make sure any surface dirt is removed. The pre-vacuum stage is extremely important for three reasons:
- So dirt doesn’t get pushed into the fabric any deeper when the machine is run over it
- Removing as much dirt as possible before the extraction process
- It will overall assist in delivering a better outcome
To better explain, imagine trying to polish your car without washing it. It just makes no sense to do one process without making sure that the previous step has been done.
During this process, our cleaners are also keeping an eye out for one more thing – stains. They are taking mental notes of where all the stains are so they’re ready for the next step (hmm, I wonder what it could be…).
3. Spray and treat the stains
You may have guessed it…this step is when our cleaners deal with the stains on the fabric.
At In-Tec, we typically use two different stain removal chemicals. The first is known as grease release which assists in getting rid of everything from chewing gum to oil stains. The second chemical is called coffee break and it’s used for…you guessed it, coffee stains! After all, coffee spills tend to happen more often than not!
I will note that when it comes to things like urine or blood stains, we use completely different chemicals for these.
But why do these stains need to be sprayed?
The answer is simple – it helps loosen the stain from the fabric before the hot water extraction step. However, this can’t be done without agitating the stain with the correct handheld brush. This forces the chemical into the affected area to assist in the later stages of the process.
4. Pre-spray the upholstery
Without applying the pre-spray chemical, it would be almost impossible to clean your upholstered furniture!
The fabric is pre-sprayed with the chosen cleaning chemical – generally a non-solvent emulsifier for removal of general dirt and other soiling and is applicable for all fabrics.
Now this step is extremely important because there is one fundamental thing the cleaner must remember to do. And that’s to not let the chemical dry before it’s been extracted via the machine. BUT that doesn’t mean the cleaner should extract straight away. Instead, they need to let the chemical soak into the fabric properly to allow it to activate, soften, and lift the dirt so it can be extracted with ease.
In order to achieve this, our cleaners only spray a certain amount of furniture at a time, depending on how much they can get through without letting the chemical dry. After they pre-spray as much as they can, they then extract those parts, and the process is repeated.
5. Hot water extraction
Are you ready to find out how we do it? How we get your upholstered furniture clean and looking brand new?
Now this section of the article does get into the nuts and bolts of the extraction machine and how it works so bear with us.
Hot water extraction is essentially like a light version of a standard pressure cleaning machine – just bigger, more powerful, and the cleaner needs to be fully trained to use it. It is pressurised water dispersed through a commercial grade machine.
The extraction process and machine can be broken down into two parts:
- the wand used to apply the hot water under pressure, and
- the machine that removes (sucks up) the water.
Because we’re cleaning a lot smaller of an area, the stainless-steel wand is a lot smaller and handheld so the cleaner can get to all the hard-to-reach parts of the furniture. The wand has 2 or 3 jets that spray water onto the fabric which loosens and removes the dirt and kills all the bacteria.
The pressure of the extractor (water coming out of the jets) needs to be around 150 psi to achieve optimal results (unlike carpet cleaning which is 350-450 psi). This low pressure ensures the cleaner isn’t risking damaging any of the fibres and also not saturating the furniture.
After the jets have sprayed water onto the carpet, the high-powered vacuums then follow by sucking up all the loosened dirt and debris and any leftover water. The cleaner is quite vigorous when it comes to the vacuuming side of it as they need to ensure most of the water is extracted out. Why? Well you don’t want any damp, musty smells from forming, do you?
What are the benefits of professional upholstery cleaning?
Throughout the article, we’ve mentioned a few times why upholstery cleaning is beneficial for your workplace furniture.
But were you aware there are more benefits to this that we’re yet to mention?
Let’s go through them all.
- Prolongs and renews the life of any upholstery
- Deodorises furniture
- Eliminates odours
- Eliminates allergens, dust, dirt, and germs
- Gets rid of stubborn spots and stains
- Prevents damage – dirt particles that land on your furniture get ground in. This eventually results in wear and tear of the fabric
- Guarantees an effective deep clean – the chemical and hot water combination produces supreme cleaning results
Let me ask you this.
After reading all the benefits that come along with having your upholstery cleaned at least once a year, do you think you need it done at your workplace?
Okay, let’s take a look at it this way.
Would you rather dirty, old-looking fabric or clean, rejuvenated, new-looking fabric?
You decide.
Why you need upholstery cleaning done on your workplace furniture
I get it.
It can be easy to overlook having your upholstered furniture cleaned because you wouldn’t think it needs deep cleaning.
But your office chairs and lounges actually do! There are a lot of benefits to having your upholstery cleaned professionally at least once a year.
You don’t want your furniture to be dirty and look dirty, and you certainly don’t want it to have skin cells and germs embedded in the fabric!
At In-Tec, our skilled cleaners are highly trained in performing hot water extraction on upholstery furniture. We provide tailor-made upholstery cleaning to suit your building’s requirements.
If you need your upholstered furniture steam cleaned, or maybe you want to ask our team some more questions, schedule a call with Paul or Caitlin. We’re here to help.
Let’s talk cleaning!
