Beginners Guide to Selecting Foam for Upholstery

Professional upholstery repair can be an expensive undertaking. However, it’s pretty easy to do it yourself, especially if the sides of your sofa or chair are fine, and you are just looking to put a bit of extra oomph back into your cushions. You could make savings by doing it yourself.

Changing your sofa cushion is easy

Changing your sofa cushions isn’t as hard as it may sound, and we have a service specifically to help you with this. You can even send your covers to us and we will do all the measuring for you to ensure that you get the correct sized foam sent back to you. It couldn’t be easier!

Check out this page to get a quote for your sofa cushions.

Sofa cushions are no longer made to last. You should also know that some sofa manufacturers purposefully design products with a limited life span – they actually want your sofa to go saggy. After all, where would they get a regular income from if it didn’t?

The name of this technique is planned obsolescence, and you’ll also find it in other industries such as electronics (laptops and computers) and car factories.

This is the reason why your grandmother still has her sewing machine that she was gifted at the age of 15. Anytime you even look for a new toaster, it seems like they’re built to last just a few months these days. But back to sofas, as experts in the foam and upholstery field, this is why we don’t recommend buying a couch with hollow fibre or blown fibre stuffing. It’s going to have a minimal lifespan, and before long, you could be sitting just a couple of inches off the ground! However, if you’ve already purchased the sofa, then not to worry – you can always just upgrade the cushions with your own foam. We stock all kinds of foams, and they all meet the UK fire safety standards too.

Foam cushions for your sofa or chair

After more than 20 years in the foam business, we know how the idea of having to track down new foam cushions for your sofa may feel a bit overwhelming. However, we’ve collected a few nuggets of knowledge that should help you find your way through.

Whether you’re reupholstering a saggy sofa or you’ve picked up a gorgeous ‘new to you’ slipper chair from an auction, then you’ll want to know more about which foam to use and how to go about your project.

Different foams for upholstery

Cushions can be filled in many ways, but here at EasyFoam we obviously love to fill them with foam. Springs, feathers, and cotton aren’t for us. We find foam the easiest to manage, and we’ve found that it also retains its shape better.

Here are some of the different types of foam available – you can see our full range of foam on our foam shape buying page.

Average-soft foam sheet – this is a fire-retardant light density foam. Perfect for projects such as headboards, sheets range in size from 76 cm to 230cm with various thicknesses.
Medium foam sheets - another fire retardent foam that comes in a pale green colour.
High firm foam sheets – a firmer foam that is suitable for cushions on sofas.

What to do with your new sofa cushions

When you receive the foam from us, you’ll need to get the foam into the cushion covers. To help you with this, we’ve created a video for you and put it on our video guides’ page. When it comes to replacing the foam on something like a slipper chair, you can just remove the fabric and the foam. Measure the area and send us the dimensions. We’ll ensure you get a delivery of foam for your chair within just a couple of days.

Upholstery isn’t as complicated as people think. At EasyFoam, we’ve had many years of experience renewing upholstery furniture such as sofas, chairs, seating on boats and in caravans. Our team of experts are very helpful and accommodating to customers, so if you need help with making your selection, measuring or anything else, just get in touch with us, and we will put you on the right track.

Reupholstering home furnishings is one of the most satisfying projects as you can customise your seating to meet your preferences.

Please contact our team for advice. We can’t wait to hear from you and help with your foam upholstery project; we are open 7 days a week.