How To Keep White Couches Clean

I get a lot of questions about how I keep my white sofas clean, especially with kids and dogs in the house. I have one trick I wanted to share today that is really easy and so far has kept our couches looking as new as the day we got them last June.

I do, in fact, let my kids crash on the sofas, we even eat on the sofas and our small dog Auggie practically lives on one of them all day long so it isn’t that we are super uptight about keeping them clean. While I’d love that they stay perfect forever, that just isn’t reality as we do live here, but so far we’ve been able to keep dirt and stains to a minimum. In fact today, not only did the dog jump on the sofa with wet paws, but my teenage son came in from basketball training and flopped his sweaty self right down on one of them!

This is an image above of one of our sofas, we have the York Slipcovered Sofa in White (you can read all about them here), which I selected because it was a true white without yellow undertones. As you can see we have a large bench cushion, which does make this little trick a bit easier.

Here is my couch as it looks 99.9% of the time (unless we are having people over or if I am taking blog photos), I simply use an old white sheet stretched over the bench cushion. You can’t even tell as it blends right in with the couch and it absorbs all the dirt and stains and protects the real cushion underneath.

Update: I later added this slipcover designed just for this purpose, it comes in multiple colors and sizes.

I snapped a quick picture as I put it back on today (I wash the sheets about every ten days, and obviously they needed it this AM after the dog /basketball incident), by pulling it tight and tucking it in well you can’t tell that it is there. Once I add some pillows, the sheet is even less noticeable. Based on how often I decide they need to be washed, I can say that this cushion does absorb the brunt of the staining, so this trick is working well.

Just a quick trick that saves me a lot of aggravation! The upright pillows on the back of the couch do have zip-off covers, so I can wash them if I need to. Anything else, like the arms or skirt I will have to spot clean (unless I want to go to the trouble of taking off the entire slipcover), but so far this is working great. You really can’t tell especially if they are tucked in nice and tight. Do you notice the sheet in the picture below?

If you don’t have bench cushions like we do, the simple solution is to cut the sheet so it wraps around each individual cushion. While I don’t have a perfect solution for something like red wine (other than drinking white LOL) you could, if you were really worried, try adding a waterproof mattress pad cut down to size underneath? I haven’t tried it but just an idea. I also use a lint brush to get the dog hair off of the sides, which also works great on my gray velvet chairs.

Just a helpful tip of the day! If you don’t have an old white sheet laying around you could also try an inexpensive white table cloth like this one.

Here are the sources in our living room~

You can also see more about affordable white slipcovered couch options in this post here.

XO,

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