GUIDE 3 – Full Upholstery Projects Tutorials

Full Upholstery Projects Tutorials

This is where technique meets reality.
With Guide 2, you understand the layers. You know how webbing, springs and padding work. Now you apply all of it to complete pieces, from start to finish, on real furniture.

Guide 3 is a library of full upholstery projects, organised by piece and complexity. Each project follows a real piece from stripping to finishing, showing how every technique connects in the right order, and why that order matters. This is where everything you’ve learned stops being abstract and starts making sense in your hands.

This page grows over time: new projects, new chair types and new categories are added as the library expands. If you want the foundations or the core technical steps first, start with Guide 1 and Guide 2, or read the complete guide on how to reupholster a chair.

Jump to a category: Stools · Headboards · Simple chairs · Bridge chairs · Cabriolet chairs · Modern chairs · Voltaire chair · Bergère chair · Club chair

---

Stools

Stools are the ideal first complete upholstery project. The structure is simple, the shape is forgiving, and there are no arms or backs to navigate. What they do give you is the full upholstery sequence in its most readable form: strip, prepare, web, pad, cover, finish. Every step is there, nothing is hidden, and the result is immediate. If you’ve never taken a piece from bare frame to finished seat, this is where to start.

---

Headboards

A headboard is a perfect first project for anyone who wants a big, visible result without stripping a frame. You work flat, on a simple shape, and practise the gestures you’ll use on every chair afterwards: gluing foam, laying wadding, placing fabric on the straight grain, temporary tacking, stapling with an even tension and folding clean corners. Start with the simple panel, then vote for the next headboard you’d like to learn.

How to make an upholstered headboard · Simple panel headboard tutorial

---

Simple chairs

Simple chair projects introduce the challenges that stools don’t have: a back to cover, corners to fold, fabric that needs to behave consistently across different planes. These projects are where you practise structure, padding thickness and clean finishing without the added complexity of arms or curved frames. A natural next step, and a necessary one before moving to more demanding shapes.

---

Bridge chairs

Bridge chairs introduce arms, and with them a new layer of complexity. You start managing volume across several surfaces, thinking about how the seat, back and arms relate to each other, visually and structurally. Proportions matter more here: the way the seat is covered affects how the back sits, and the way the arms are padded shapes the whole silhouette. These projects develop your eye as much as your technique.

---

Cabriolet chairs

Cabriolet chairs, the classic French armchair with curved frames and a sprung seat, are where traditional upholstery really comes into its own. The curved back and shaped seat rail require accuracy in both padding and covering: fabric has to ease around curves without pulling or puckering, and the padding has to follow a shape that isn’t flat in any direction. These projects also typically involve hand-tied springs in the seat, which adds another layer of skill. Demanding, but enormously satisfying to complete well.

---

Modern chairs

Modern chairs have their own logic: cleaner lines, different frame constructions, and materials that behave differently from traditional furniture. Spring units replace hand-tied coils, foam replaces layered fibre, and the covering sequences change. Understanding how upholstery adapts to contemporary furniture, without forcing traditional methods onto frames they weren’t designed for, is a skill that opens up a much wider range of projects. These tutorials show you how.

---

Voltaire chair

The Voltaire is one of France’s most recognisable armchairs: a high back with a gentle lumbar curve shaped to follow the body, padded arms, and a generous seat that needs to look full and soft from every angle. The shape is forgiving enough for a confident beginner, but it demands precision in the padding stage, especially around the back corners and the front edge of the seat. These projects cover the complete process from frame to finish, using modern foam techniques to recreate a traditional silhouette. A Voltaire done well is a chair you will want to keep forever.

---

Bergère chair

The bergère is a generous chair: deep seat, substantial back, padded arms, multiple layers of comfort built up carefully before anything is covered. These projects bring together everything: structure, springing, traditional and modern padding, careful covering across complex shapes, and finishing details that need to work across several different surfaces at once. If you can upholster a bergère well, you can upholster almost anything.

---

Club chair

What is a club chair? Low, deep and generously padded, the club chair is one of the most comfortable armchairs ever designed, and one of the most demanding to cover. Its thick rounded arms, its curved back and its loose seat cushion ask for a precise covering sequence, where each panel hides the fixings of the one before. Traditionally covered in leather, more precisely basane, it is also reupholstered beautifully in fabric. This project follows a real Art Deco club chair from dismantling to the new seat cushion.

---

How to use this guide

You don’t need to follow every project in order. Choose a category that matches your current confidence level and the piece you have in front of you. Each project reinforces the same upholstery logic while exposing you to new shapes, new challenges and new decisions. The more projects you complete, the more you start to see the patterns, and the more quickly you can read a new piece and know exactly what it needs.

If you still feel unsure about the technical steps, go back to Guide 2: Core Upholstery Techniques before tackling a full project.

---

Is an upholstery tutorial missing?

Looking for a specific chair style? Leave a comment on this page and tell me what you’d love to learn next. I regularly create tutorials based on your requests.

Logged-in members can leave a comment below to request future tutorials and specific chair styles.