Why upholstery needs more than a once- or twice-a-year clean.

Seker Cleaning Guide

What builds up between cleans

Upholstery and mattresses absorb far more than surface dust. Every day of normal use adds skin cells, body oils, and airborne dust into the fibres — and dust mites feed on exactly that buildup. None of this is visible to the eye, which is why a couch or mattress can look presentable while still holding a lot more than it appears to.

Spot-cleaning and vacuuming handle what's on the surface, but they don't reach what's worked its way into the padding underneath. That's the part a deep clean is built to address.

Why twice a year often isn't enough

How often upholstery needs a proper clean depends mostly on how much use it gets, not the calendar. A family lounge suite used daily, a couch that pets sleep on, or a mattress used every night all accumulate buildup faster than a spare-room daybed or a rarely-used formal lounge suite. For most main-use furniture, twice a year is a minimum starting point rather than a comfortable buffer.

Households with young children, pets, or allergy sufferers generally get more day-to-day benefit from cleaning more frequently, since it's their exposure to what's built up in the fabric that a clean directly reduces.

A realistic schedule

• Daily-use couches and mattresses: every 4–6 months
• Homes with pets or young children: every 3–4 months
• Guest rooms or low-use furniture: once a year is usually sufficient
• Rugs in high-traffic areas: every 6 months

These are starting points, not rules — the right interval is the one that matches how the piece is actually used in your home.

What a professional clean adds over routine vacuuming

Regular vacuuming is still worth doing between professional cleans — it removes loose surface debris before it works further into the fabric. A professional deep clean goes further, extracting what's already embedded in the padding and fibres, which is the part vacuuming can't reach.