Reading the cleaning code on your sofa: W, S, WS and X

These letters are the maker’s recommendation,¹ not a law, and not every maker uses them. Some sofas carry the care symbols you know from clothes instead, or nothing at all. If yours has symbols, a crossed-out wash tub means do not wash, because the piece may be sensitive to any wet treatment.² It does not tell you that a solvent is safe: that is the dry-cleaning circle, and a crossed-out circle rules out dry cleaning and solvent stain removers too.²

1. Under the seat cushions, on the deck of the sofa, or at the base: that is where labels usually hide.¹
2. On a sewn-in label along a cushion’s zip.
3. Underneath the frame, on the panel of dust cloth, or near the legs.
4. In the paperwork or on the maker’s website, if you still have the model name. In a rented house, the previous owner’s folder is worth a look.

A sofa in a rented villa has often lost its label, and a sofa with replacement covers may carry a tag that no longer tells the truth. If the covers have been changed, the tag describes the original fabric, not the one you are sitting on.

Do the test that a good upholsterer or cleaner would do. Choose a hidden place, such as the back of a skirt or the underside of a cushion. Apply a little of the cleaner you intend to use on a white cloth, press it on, wait, and let it dry fully. Look for colour on the cloth, a ring, or a change in texture. If anything changes, stop there.

Be especially careful with viscose, rayon, silk, linen-rich weaves and anything with a soft velvety pile. In our judgement they are the ones most likely to mark or shrink, so look for their code first. Natural cotton can also turn brown if it is left wet too long, so a thorough wet clean of a pale cotton sofa is about drying as much as about washing: slow drying is one of the leading causes of browning, bleeding and shrinkage.³

1. Blot, do not rub. Press a clean white cloth on it and lift. Rubbing drives it in and damages the surface.
2. Lift solids off with a spoon before anything else.
3. Check the code before you add anything at all.
4. For W or WS, use a little mild detergent solution on a cloth, never poured on the fabric, then blot with clean water and let it dry in moving air.
5. For S or X, stop at the blotting. Call someone.

What ruins sofas is usually not the wine but the rescue. A lot of permanent marks begin with a supermarket product that did not suit the fibre, and a stain that has been scrubbed with the wrong thing is much harder to treat than a stain that has been left alone. Our stain treatment page goes into what can and cannot be done.

We clean fabric sofas by hot-water extraction, and hot-water extraction is a water-based method. So the code matters to us too. The technician checks the care label and the fabric, then does a colour test on a hidden area before anything else. A fabric whose tag rules out water does not get a water clean: you hear so at that point, along with what can realistically be done.

Leather is a separate matter. It has no W or S, and it gets its own clean-and-condition treatment. If you want to see what a clean costs, a €119 two-seater and a €149 three-seater are on the sofa cleaning page with the rest of the list, and most sofas are dry in 4 to 6 hours. If you are wondering how to make that shorter, read how long a sofa takes to dry.