Save the Sofa: 5 Easy, Good-Looking Ways to Protect the Favorite Seat in the House

If you’re sitting right now, chances are you’re on your sofa. I myself am in a full recline writing from mine. The most used seat in the house deserves some preemptive measures to keep it not only intact but fully presentable. Short of adding a fitted slipcover, or encasing your sofa in plastic as past generations were known to do, there are easy, no-sew, washable ways to protect the cushions from dogs and cats, romping kids, and other wear and tear while adding visual interest. Here are our five favorite DIY approaches.

1. Add something soft.

Above: Remodelista founding editor, Julie Carlson, and CEO/publisher, Josh Groves, at home in Mill Valley, California, on a sheepskin-layered Catherine Memmi sofa. Photograph by Matthew Williams from our first book, Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home. Above: Same sofa as above with a new ensemble of cushions and a Moroccan pom pom blanket, photographed by Leslie Williamson for the Apiece Apart feature on Julie and her daughter, Darcy. The blanket is a discontinued design from Twenty One Tonnes; find something similar at L’Aviva Home.

2. Tuck a textile on top.

Above: In his Brooklyn living room, artist Wayne Pate tucked a vintage floral fabric around the seat cushions of his white canvas sofa. The surrounding paintings are by Pate—see his latest @waynepate, and take a look at his Paris-Inspired Fabric and Wallpaper and Painterly Tile Collection for Balineum. Above: In her Edinburgh apartment, Nina Plummer of Ellei Home has a Le Grand Air Sofa with a loose slipcover that looks like the seat cushions were blanketed in a natural linen sheet. Bedding, drop cloths, towels, and yardage of all sorts can easily be wrapped protectively around base cushions—and rearranged as required. Photograph by Nina Plummer. Above: In his New York apartment, creative director Matthew Axe folded a denim patchwork blanket—purchased at a Martha Stewart Living tag sale—atop his reupholstered Goodwill sofa. Photograph by Eric Piasecki from Quiet, Please: A Stylish Apartment in Bustling Jackson Heights, Queens.

3. Layer the cushions with bedrolls.

Above: Designer Corinne Gilbert tops the daybed in her Brooklyn workroom with homemade bedrolls made of linen and ticking. See more of her work in Expert Advice: How to Decorate Like a French Woman and Steal This Look: Modern Bohemian Living Room in Brooklyn. Photograph by Matthew Williams. Above: In another corner of Nina Plummer’s Edinburgh living room: the classic OGK Safari Daybed cushioned with kapok-filled Safari Daybed Mattresses by Tensira. Photograph by Nina Plummer. Follow her shop @elleihome. Above: Tensira Kapok Mattress Bedrolls from Goodee work well atop sofas and daybeds of many sorts, including these Ikea Utaker Stackable Beds in TBo architects Bretaigne Walliser and Thom Dalmas’s cabin. See more of their Catskills hideaway in Steal This Look: A One-Room Family Cabin, and find a full tour in Remodelista: The Low-Impact Home. For our roster of bedrolls sources, go to 7 Favorites: Soft, Stylish Throwbeds. Photograph by Matthew Williams for Remodelista.

4. Cloak the whole sofa.

Above: In her shades-of-white bungalow in Pasadena, LA designer Michaela Scherrer pet-proofed the living room sofas with linen slipcovers  layered with white leather blankets. The linen serves as protection from cat claws and the leather as a dog guard that’s easy to spot clean. Photograph Matthew Williams from Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home. Above: A sheet-cloaked John Derian for Cisco Meadow Sofa greets visitors in the 1754 Maine house that builder-designer Anthony Esteves restored for his mother: see The New New England. Photograph by Greta Rybus Above: In a villa in the South of France designed in the late 1920s by Jacques Couëlle, interior designer and stylist Lauren Olivia unified a built-in banquette by covering its cushions in linen throws. Photograph by Sarah Button. Above: At home in Freeport, Maine, designer Kacee Witherbee of Insides Studio extends the coverage by applying two stripes to her sofa. Go to Personal, Not Polished to see more of her 1800s cape. Photography by Ari Kellerman, courtesy of Insides Studio. Above: At this Scottish rental cottage, a cotton rug is folded, gift-wrap-style, over the sofa. See more in Borradill, a Designer’s Scots-Scandi Rental House and Cottage on the West Coast of Scotland. Photograph by Joshua Page, courtesy of Mookerjee Design.

5. Patch as needed.

Above: When your sofa fabric starts to give, consider adding some patches. At Little Mill Abergavenny, a dreamy holiday cottage in Wales, the sofa covered in a much-repaired vintage French striped sheet. Above: Rather than recovering her cat’s favorite spot on the sofa, architect Maria Berman of Berman Horn Studio added patterned patches that lend visual interest. See more in “Silly, Thrifty and Not Too Serious: Two Architects at Home in Harlem and Trend Alert: Visible Mending All Over the House. Photograph by Greta Rybus

N.B.: This story originally ran on May 16, 2023, and has been updated.

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