What are the Best Sofa Fabrics for Summer?

During the warm and humid Summer months, there’s nothing better than sitting in your cool living room on your comfy G Plan sofa, with a deliciously refreshing chilled drink at the end of the day. Some fabrics can affect the look, feel and temperature of your sofa during hotter weather, so we’ve put together a list of the best G Plan sofa fabrics and leathers for summer.

Chenille

Closely related to velvet-style fabrics, chenille is extremely soft and cosy to snuggle into. It is very hardwearing and resistant to discoloration; ideal if your G Plan sofa is situated in direct sunlight. Many chenille fabrics are made from polyester, a very durable synthetic fibre, making for excellent durability when it comes to everyday family life that includes children and pets.

Due to the dynamic of the material’s structure, chenille fabrics are also very stain resistant, making them superb fabrics for summer. Olefin fabrics are akin to polyester upholstery, again being a very durable sofa fabric option. The Jay Blades X G Plan collection includes a selection of 100% recycled Olefin fabrics, produced from converted pre-consumer textile waste. These recycled fabrics, including Tweed Salmon and Tweed Oatmeal, make for more sustainable, responsible upholstery alternatives, whilst being good sofa fabrics for the summer.

Our G Plan chenille fabric favourites include: Remco Light Grey, Beach Duck Egg and Manhattan Kingfisher.

Leather

There’s a reason so much iconic furniture has been covered in leather. High quality leather upholstery is timeless and classic, bringing with it a sense of luxury. However, leather sofas have often been labelled as being ‘hot in hot weather’ and ‘cold in cold weather’ – but this isn’t always the case. Unlike other sofa fabrics, leather can very easily adapt to the temperature of a room. This means that if your leather sofa is situated in direct sunlight during the summer months, it will become hotter. However, if you keep your living spaces nice and shady in hot weather, your leather sofa will embody this, remaining cool and comfy.

Lighter leather colours are ideal for summer, as these are more likely to reflect heat, whilst darker tans will absorb it. It is also best to keep your leather sofa out of direct sunlight, especially on hot summer days, as excess UV exposure can cause permanent damage to the surface of your leather sofa.

Our G Plan leather favourites include: Cambridge Chalk, Genesis Honey and Capri Putty.

Aquaclean

Aquaclean is possibly the best sofa fabric for summer, due to its stain release technology. A protective treatment covers every fibre of Aquaclean fabric, with an invisible molecular layer that acts as a cleaning facilitator. As a result, if accidental summer spills and stains happen, the cleaning process becomes much simpler, as majority of household stains can be removed from your sofa with just water.

With the start of summertime comes the chance of suncream stains, ice-cream drips and sandy pawprints; Aquaclean allows these blemishes to be cleaned off your sofa upholstery hassle-free. Because of this easy-clean technology, Aquaclean elongates the longevity of your sofa, as it will look neat and tidy for a very long time.

Our G Plan Aquaclean fabric favourites include: Montilla Midnight, Zahara Stone and Girona Jade.

Cotton

Cotton is a very light and airy fabric, as it is made from natural fibres, making it a perfect sofa fabric for summer months. It’s a highly versatile fabric, due to its densely woven structure; however this can make stains very hard to remove from cotton upholstery, as spillages can absorb into the material more quickly. However, due to the tight weave, cotton will last for a very long time and is relatively resistant to fading. This is ideal if your G Plan sofa is sat in direct sunlight, as the colour of your sofa upholstery is less likely to look dull and bleached over time.

Many sofa fabrics aren’t made from 100% cotton, but still contain a large proportion of the natural fibre, meaning they will still withhold many of the characteristics previously mentioned.

Our G Plan cotton fabric favourites include: Stingray Platinum, Desert Ocean and Coppice Ash.

Not sure which fabric would suite your style best?

At G Plan, we have a wide range of fabrics and leathers for you to browse through. Everyone’s interior design taste is different; that’s why we cater for every shape and size of home. We recommend ordering up to 8 of your favourite G Plan fabric swatches, so you can get a true representation of how a fabric would look and feel in your home. You can order a selection of swatches for free by clicking here; this will help you decided which is the best sofa fabric not only for summer, but also your home for years to come.