Custom upholstery is a wonderful way to make your home feel uniquely yours and seems to be a dying art. There are so many options for texture, color, and utility as well as locations you might have never thought of to employ custom upholstery! The obvious ones include your furniture and window treatments but today we will walk through five places you wouldn’t normally think of employing custom upholstery in your home! They include your walls, wall panels, doors, and hand rails. Let’s dive in to see them in action, the best fabric styles for each, and the process to implement them.

Wall Upholstery:

Every wall holds the potential of becoming something beautiful. While paint and wall-paper can look wonderful, upholstered walls offer not only aesthetic elegance but also acoustic benefits and a textural softening effect to any interior. Combine colors and textures for an incomparable design effect. Upholstered wall paneling is ideal for a large space, small rooms, powder rooms, lobbies and lecture rooms to absorb sound.

Fabrics selected for wall upholstery should be chosen with care. Light weight silks, cottons, and linen make the best choices. Avoid pattern fabrics. Solids are much easier to install and your overall yardage requirements will be less. As with any upholstery project an expert upholsterer will measure the space and tellyou exactly how many yards of fabric are required.

Installing custom upholstery on your walls takes a bit of planning and is best to have an expert install. You should expect to see layers of batting or cotton Dacron stapled to the walls to add a scrumptious effect before the fabric is applied. The batting also deadens the acoustics for a hushed feeling. Once the fabric is added the staples can be concealed with ribbon or trim.

Upholstered walls require little care. Having wall upholstery in both my office, where the walls are upholstered in linen, and my media room, where the walls are upholstered in a wool tartan, have been a joy and are easy to clean. Using an upholstery brush with low suction, attached to a vacuum is an easy way to deal with the dust.

Another place for custom upholstery are wall panels to divide rooms and give extra separation to spaces you want to highlight. Whether you cover an entire wall or just part of it, it is a unique way to make any room more inviting or quiet. These can also be wonderful alternatives to headboards and are great for bedrooms, kids rooms, home theaters and offices.

Fabric Selection

Similar to the walls, you can select any kind of fabric, but consider the size if you want to use a pattern as it can be difficult to match up.

The Process

Upholstered wall panels are are made to fit the space and then installed on site. There are many patterns to choose from like: tufted, channeled, rectangular. They can mount easily to walls with brackets or industrial strength Velcro.

Care

Care is very similar to the walls, you should not need to do much but occasional dusting.

Fabric Selection

Because it’s a door, leather and ultra suede are great choices for durability. Nail-heads should also receive special attention in selection for that custom design. These considerations add the finishing touch to your upholstered door design.

The Process

Since staples and tacks are most secure in solid wood, it’s important to replace hollow core doors with solid wood doors when upholstering.

Care

Because doors do get a lot of use having a durable material is very helpful and using whatever care you would typically employ for leather, suede, etc should be employed here to keep your fabric in top shape.

Leather handrails elevate an overlooked metal or wood rail to a distinctive feature. This elegant and durable solution for stairs enhances a space with a handcrafted, bespoke architectural element. Originating in Europe, the craft of wrapping handrails in leather is an art form.