How Do You Reupholster a Dining Room Chair Seat?

Recently, I bought a new dining room set from Facebook Marketplace and I love it. But the fabric seats of the chairs were ivory and stained from years of use.

I’ve done a bit of reupholstering in the past with various degrees of successful and unsuccessful results. So when I saw these nifty covers to reupholster my dining room seat that are kind of like fitted sheets I decided to give them a try! And the results are perfecto!

How Do You Reupholster a Dining Room Chair Seat?

There are a variety of methods you can use to reupholster a dining room chair seat, and after a bunch of research I decided to go with the easiest one. 🙂

I used the subrtex Dining Room Chiar Seat Covers from Amazon.com. When I did mine I was able to do all 8 chairs for $40! That’s incredible.

I’m really glad I found these because I was DREADING trying to source upholstery fabric and get the corners right on my dining room chairs. I really didn’t want lumpy corners!

These are sort of like fitted sheets for the dining room chair seats. They have elastic all the way around and they are made of stretchy material.

And if green isn’t your thing, that’s OK these dining room seat covers come in lots of color choices including: white, grey, navy black, maroon, yellow and many others.

When you are using these types of covers you don’t have to take the old fabric off – YAY! But you do have to unscrew the chair seat from the bottom of the chair.

This is a fairly simple process. You turn the dining chair upside down and find the screws and unscrew them.

Once the chair seat is removed from the chair you can start recovering the chair seat. The big key with this type of chair cover is to make sure the corners are lined up with the corner of your chair seat.

I learned this the hard way! The first one I put on was all lumpy on the sides because I didn’t line the chair cover up to the corner of the chair seat.

But I took it off and tried again and the second time it came out perfect.

Tip: Your chair seats don’t have to be perfectly square for this type of dining room chair seat reupholster to work. These chair covers are SUPER stretchy and will accommodate most chair seats without a problem. I’ve even seen them pictured on round ottoman lids!

These chair seat covers come with some fabric ties on the bottom, and when you are done fitting them to the chair seat, you are supposed to tie the ties.

I’m honestly not sure if these ties are 100% necessary for most of the types of chairs you will be using them on because you will be tightly screwing the chair seats back onto the chair when you are done, so the covers don’t really slip at all.

The next step is to screw the chair seat back onto the chair. When I did this I found that I often had to screw right through the chair seat cover.

To make that work I would pull the fabric tight and then kind of twist the screw through the cover to make a starter hole. That kept the fabric from bunching up around the screw.

Then I repeated on all 8 of my chairs and ended up with a very nice finished project and NO LUMPY corners! Whew hoo!

Overall, I’m really happy with this solution for reupholstering my dining room chair seats. It was quick, easy, and inexpensive. And it’s a great way to makeover your dining room for a low cost.

Should I Reupholster My Dining Room Chairs?

This is a very good question. I would answer yes… but with a few thoughts. If you have good quality dining room chairs and the seats or whole chair needs to be reupholstered then it can be worth doing.

Professional reupholstery can be quite pricey. but there are a ton of good slipcovers for both full upholstered dining room chairs and upholstered dining room chair seats that can give you a great look with a much lower cost.

For me, my chairs came from what was originally a very pricey set and I got them on Facebook Marketplace for a steal. So they are great quality and I want them to last me quiet a while longer.

Using this upholstery method means I can change the seat covers out when I want to keep them fresh looking.

How Do You Reupholster a Dining Chair Without Removing Old Fabric?

Some of whether you need to remove old fabric comes down to what condition the fabric is in and what condition the padding on the chair is in.

If both are in good condition and if the pattern of the original upholstery is not going to show through the new upholstery, then you probably don’t have to remove the old fabric and can just upholster over it like I did.

How Much Does It Cost to Reupholster a Dining Room Chair?

If you do it the way I did it with the seat covers, then it’s about $5 to $10 a chair to reupholster. If you need full chair slip covers or if you want it done professionally then the price can get a lot higher very quickly.