The following is a paid advertising feature for Aquaclean Fabric.

Back in October, I took delivery of the prettiest blush pink 2-seater velvet sofa as part of my living room ‘midi-makeover’. It’s something I had wanted for this room for such a long time but I’d hesitated in buying one simply because I wasn’t convinced it’d be able to stand up to 2 adults and 3 messy pets. Thankfully, I’d been contacted by a brand I wasn’t familiar with at the time – Aquaclean Fabric. They promised me that my pale, pretty sofa used a fantastic new technology which meant that my sofa would be totally stain-resistant in a way I’d never seen before.

I admit, I was very intrigued. I adore velvet furniture but it’s not exactly known for how easy it is to maintain. I was terrified the dog would jump up with his messy dirty paws and within weeks, the whole thing would be ruined. The Aquaclean fabrics, I found out, were very different from what I’d come to expect from velvet. Stains lifted with just water, no chemicals required and the sofa would maintain its beauty for a really long time.

The sofa is the Fluted Back Meghan 2-seater sofa from John Lewis but the most exciting part of it is that it’s made with Aquaclean’s Harriet Plain Velvet Fabric in Rose. I was so impressed by the fabric and how easy it was to maintain. I know so many people who have said they’d love a velvet sofa but they were waiting for their children to get a bit older or even fly the nest before they’d even consider it.

Yet, here was a fabric that was soft to the touch, added a gorgeous texture to any room, is available in so many different colours and yet, was totally easy to maintain. No one has to wait to indulge any longer!

As I’d mentioned before, I’ve become an ambassador for Aquaclean Fabrics over the past 6 months – a huge honour of course but something I would never take lightly because I really need to believe in what I’m sharing with you, I need to know for sure that what I’m promoting is something I truly believe in. Well, I’m so impressed by this fabric and the technology behind it that I wanted to check back in with you to tell you how well the sofa is doing after 6 months of constant use. Given the current situation right now, Wayne is on furlough which means we are ALL home ALL the time. The sofa is getting more use than it ever does. So how well has it held up?

Mum, does my bum look big on this sofa?

I thought the best way to share how easy the sofa is to maintain is to basically just leave it to get dirty! Ha! Yep, while I would normally spot clean any stains as they happened, I thought it would be so much better to just allow the sofa to build up a bit of the mess of everyday life for over a month. Sounds gross but honestly – how often do you really clean your sofa? You might run the hoover over it but otherwise, do you really clean it? We sat on it plenty, of course, but the dog sleeps on it, jumps on it to look out the window – he’s probably the worst when it comes to being messy in this house. So I just let him do his thing – no throw, no tip-toeing around it. We basically just lived with and used the sofa as anyone would in their normal every day lives.

How I Clean My Aquaclean Velvet Sofa

So here’s what the sofa looked like after a month of just leaving the dirt to pile up. You can see Quito has happily dragged in stuff from the garden onto the top, there are a few small stains and it just generally looks a bit dirty.

Not nice but cleaning it is such a breeze, I promise. (And I swear this is genuine, I haven’t put rubbish on top just to make it look convincing – this is actually what the sofa looked like!)

My first step to cleaning the Aquaclean fabric was to gently vacuum it with a small brush attachment. This lifted any loose dirt that could potentially scratch the fabric. (As an aside, I’ve been nervous about the dog’s claws scratching at it when he jumps on the sofa – so far, there’s been absolutely no issues with scratching. The cats don’t claw at it either so while I can’t vouch for every pet, I’ve not had any issues with scratching at all from mine!)

Much better but I noticed a small stain of who knows what on the seat. It was also looking a bit dirty overall. 

I started off on the stain. Using a small bowl of water and some clean cotton rags, I wet the rag so that it was damp (not dripping wet) and gently rubbed in circular motions over the stain.

Truthfully, I’m not sure how long the stain had been there but I’m sure that it was long enough that on a standard sofa, it would likely have set and left a permanent mark. Not on Aquaclean fabric, though! 

A couple of goes with the cloth and the stain was lifted completely as you can see on the rag! (Also excuse the shocking state of my nails – I will be running to my nail salon as soon as this is all over!)

I then took a new cloth, wet it fully and squeezed it out so that it was nice and damp (but again, not dripping wet) and ran it over the entire sofa.

Look at the dirt that came out of it!! OMG it’s so gross and shocking but this is how easily the dirt comes out of the Aquaclean velvet with just water! I changed out the cloth and did this a couple of times until the cloth came up clean.

Let’s remind ourselves of how awful it looked when we started…

And this is after! Pretty impressive, right? The sofa was dry again to the touch within a half an hour but where I’d concentrated on the stains, it took a bit longer to dry – maybe an hour or so. But this is the result – the sofa looks good as new again! And I used no harsh chemicals, just a bit of water – it’s that easy.

If you’re curious about the science behind this technology, whether it’s environmentally friendly too (spoiler: it is!) and where you can purchase this fabric or furniture made with this fabric, then be sure to have a read of my post all about Aquaclean’s fabrics here. 

He’s up there looking out the window all day long and I’m not at all worried about the sofa. We call it “Quito TV” ;)

I am genuinely impressed with how easy this sofa is to maintain in our busy household and how beautifully the pale velvet Aquaclean fabric has held up over all these months! I hope you can see too how impressive this velvet technology really is. Are you ready to take the plunge and buy yourself a beautiful piece of velvet furniture now you can see how easy it is to keep looking good? Let me know what you think in the comments below!