How to Make Your Couch Look Like New : A Tutorial

When we moved into our new house, I spent a lot of time contemplating our couch. It's the first couch that I bought after college, and while it's served us well and is incredibly comfy, it looked like this:

 No amount of fluffing or beating the cushions seemed to make a difference. I thought that surely we'd just have to buy a new couch. In a last-ditch effort, I googled "tricks to make your couch like new", and I came across some tricks that actually work! 

They took my couch from this: 

To this:

From this saggy mess: 

To straight-from-the-delivery-truck:

 Seriously, it's like new again. I did this in preparation for our housewarming party in July. I had friends and family asking me if the couch was a new buy. Two months later, now, the couch is holding up exceptionally well, still looking like new. 

Here is how I did it. 

I stripped down all of the seat cushions to just the inserts. The covers went straight into the wash on a low-heat setting (Don't skip this step- It makes a big difference!). 

This is what the cushions looked like without the covers, a thick foam covered in a batting and an interfacing material on top. 

Over time, the cushion start to lose their fluff. This is what causes the couch to look saggy and old. The insert has been sat on over and over again and been sandwiched into oblivion. 

All they need is a little more "fluff" to restore them to their former glory. Using the thickest quilt batting I had on hand, I wrapped each seat cushion like a present. 

I used just a little of this to help the batting stay in place. 

Then I put the interfacing material back around the cushion. 

Once the covers were dry, I slipped the cushions back in and moved on to the back cushions.

The back cushions are built a little differently. They are really just pillow inserts within the cushion cover. 

I found some extra pillow inserts I had on hand so that I could use the poly-filling inside. You could also just buy a bag of poly-filling at a craft store (or Amazon). 

Using the filling from my extra pillow insert, I unzipped the back cushion and stuffed it with some additional filling. I think I ended up using the filling from a 16" x 16" pillow insert for each back cushion. I just kind of kept going until the cushion felt full. 

Finally, I gave the whole couch a vacuuming, and I was done! 

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