Product Care

General care

We want to ensure that your new furniture lasts. For this reason, we have put together a quick and easy guide to help you best maintain the appearance and life of your new lounge.

Easy tips on how to make your furniture last

Avoid from placing your furniture too close to direct heat or air conditioning.

Avoid sitting on the arms or allow children to jump on your suite. This will shorten the life span of your furniture dramatically.

Avoid over exposure to sunlight will cause your furniture to fade.

Avoid pulling loose threads to prevent causing holes. Trim them off neatly with sharp scissors.

Open and close recliner mechanisms with care. Ensure small children do not swing on them or operate them incorrectly.

Try and avoid having yourself that ‘favourite seat’, use your whole suite equally. This will keep your furniture looking the same all over and aging as one.

Over time, perspiration and natural oils from our skins and hair can have an effect on the finish of leather. Where hands, bare arms or heads rest on the hide, wipe over regularly with a slightly damp cotton cloth and a recommended leather cleaning product. Do the same with any areas where pets may have rubbed against your furniture.

Do not leave newspapers lying on your suite. Ink can stain the cover permanently. Avoid sitting on light coloured suites, in particular pale leathers, wearing denim jeans or non colour-fast dark clothing. The dye can transfer on to your furniture & cause perm. discoloration.

Leather Care

Your lounge is usually the room where your visitors and family gather and spend a lot of time. This means your new suite of lounges will need consistent maintenance if you want to keep it in a good condition. Whether it’s standard lounge furniture, an electric recliner chair or a recliner lounge, proper care and cleaning will be needed to sustain—and even extend—lifespans. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when cleaning and caring for your leather furniture.

Water, Not Soap

The golden rule with leather suites is “NO SOAP”. Never use any form of detergent on a leather suite. While leather is very durable, it’s not resistant to the harsh chemicals in detergents and other household products.

The most basic cleaning of your leather lounges involves warm, not hot, water and a fluff free white cloth. Using a white cloth will prevent any dyes from coming off the cloth and being absorbed by the leather.

On a similar note – Vacuuming is also important to remove dust that can cause abrasions on your leather.

Blotting vs Rubbing

When there’s a spill on the suite, never wipe or rub. This will cause the spill to stain and spread. Blot the spill with a clean, dry, white cloth. For optimal results, use a porous cloth as this will absorb the spill rather than spread it further into the leather.

Keep Pets Off

If you have cats or dogs, try to keep them off of your leather lounge furniture as their claws can cause damage that is difficult, if not impossible, to fix.

Avoid Contact with Heavily Dyed Items

If you have opted for a light coloured leather lounge suite, then you will need to be more aware of it coming into contact with heavily dyed items of clothing, such as denim jeans. It is best to avoid lounging on your leather suite in these kinds of clothing as dye transfer can occur. Although not an immediately noticeable issue, if not avoided, you may notice the effects of dye transfer occurring after a number of years.

Heat and Sunlight

Heat and sunlight cause leather to dry out and crack. Avoid putting your suite too close to windows with direct sunlight, or fireplaces. An easy way to test if the leather is getting too hot is to run your hand over your sofa. If it feels hot, then it’s at risk of getting damaged.

To prevent permanent damage, put a light non-dyed throw over it, or rotate your furniture from time to time. If your suite is constantly exposed to sun through a window, ensure that you condition it with leather conditioner to keep the material moist.

Leather Protection and Conditioners

One of the easiest ways of sustaining the life of your leather suite is to use specialised leather product care kits. A big tip here is, to not buy these leather care kits from just any store or dealer. Wherever possible, buy the leather care products that are offered by the suppliers of your particular suite. The reason for this is quite simple. Different suppliers mix up different products specific to the types of leather they use for their particular lounge suites.

We recommend you fully clean and protect your leather furniture 2-4 times a year, by following the directions on the bottles. Pay particular attention to the seats, arms and head rests, where you experience the greatest amount of body contact. Leather conditioner contains specialised compounds that nourish and soften the leather, preventing cracking and drying out.

A leather lounge suite is an investment. Caring for it correctly and regularly will add years to your suite’s life.

NOTE: Particular care should be taken if you are taking certain medications (including, but not limited to; chemotherapy, blood pressure and heart medications). Some properties of these medications can be transferred through perspiration onto the surface of the furniture and cause stains or damage. If you use these kinds of medications, we recommend that you increase the frequency of cleaning and protecting your leather furniture. Pay particular attention to arms and head rests, and those areas that experience the greatest body contact.

Fabric Care by Warwick

The most frequent problem with upholstery is predominantly stains and discolouration. Before attempting to remove a stain from your fabric lounge and furniture, it is helpful to know what type of fabric the furniture is covered with. Always test any stain removal method in an inconspicuous area before you start other areas. Remember to follow the manufacturer’s cleaning instructions and only use products they recommend

Spot cleaning

Treat spills and stains as soon as possible. Test on hidden area to ensure fabric and colour are not removed. Gently scrape any soil or mop any liquid from the surface of the fabric. Use of soap or detergent with water should be approached with caution since overzealous rinsing to remove soap residue may result in over-wetting, water marking and possible wetting of substructure (this may create other stains or damage products).

For non-oil-based stains use warm water and non-toilet soaps which do not contain optical brighteners (consider Velvet soap, Lux Flakes, Softly). Mix a small amount of soap and warm water solution and apply to the stain, rubbing gently. Blot dry with a clean towel. Apply cool water (preferably filtered or distilled water) and blot dry again. Then with a hair dryer, working out from the centre of the stain, dry quickly to prevent rings forming. It is generally preferable to clean whole panels of fabric in this way rather than trying to spot clean specific areas.

For oil-based stains following the same basic guidelines as above, apply a proprietary brand solvent based cleaner and try to clean generally in panels rather than spot cleaning specific areas. 

Professional cleaning frequenzy

Professional cleaning frequency Is determined by the furniture use, your own maintenance, upkeep and environmental conditions. As a good ‘rule of thumb’ overall cleaning is recommended every 12 months for most family room lounges.

Professional fabric servicing

Warwick Fabrics recommend that water-based 'Fluro chemical' type fabric protectors (such as DuPont Teflon® and 3M Scotchgard®) be applied by licensed applicators only. Check your care label first to see if a mill-applied protection was incorporated during fabric manufacture. Fabric protectors do not eliminate the need for vacuuming, routine cleaning or proper care. They will, however, make spot cleaning and vacuuming quicker, easier and more efficient between professional cleans and keep your fabric looking cleaner longer, as well as extending its life. Professionals applying fabric protectors must always pre-test to qualify fabric suitability.

Pilling

Pilling can occur occasionally as a result of normal daily wear and should not be considered as a fault. There are many variables which can trigger pilling, including climatic conditions, atmospheric purity, and user environment. Even specific clothing types (fleecy tracksuits etc) can transfer pills from the clothing to the furniture fabric. As the fabric surface is rubbed, a single or small group of loose fibres on the surface begins to twist upon itself, forming tiny balls or ’pills. Often the catalyst that starts this process is a foreign fibre or speck of dirt. Pilling can be successfully removed with battery operated pilling tools available from most haberdashery stores. ‘De-pilling’ only removes unsightly loose surface fibres and does not affect fabric performance.