With interior decoration, there a lot of ways to change up and improve the look of a room. Using African prints can be a great way to revamp your living room. You can reupholster your chairs with the prints which usually come in vibrant colours and patterns. Before you start, have the following handy: scissors, hammer, nails, screws, pliers, screwdriver, small bowl and glue. Now you can get started.
- Get or match a colour scheme: African prints can be a bit ‘too much’ for interior decoration because of the vibrant and diverse prints and colours. It can be a bit tricky to match other things in your living room to the print and you do not want an ugly clash of colours in your room. First thing you should do is develop a colour scheme. African prints usually come in multiple colours, so you can create a scheme for your living room with other colours that will match and tone down the colours on the print. This is good if you are repainting your living room. If not, pick a print that matches your existing colour scheme without becoming ‘shouty’.
- Mix and match: To reduce the ‘shoutiness’ of using African print, you can decide not to reupholster all your chairs with the print. If your chairs come in single colours, you can leave half of them untouched or reupholster them with a single colour fabric that matches and tones down the African print. The other half can get reupholstered with the print.
- Dismantle: You would need to remove the seat from the frames, handle from the chair etc. Each component of the chairs has to be reupholstered separately. Put every nail and screw into a small bowl so that they do not go missing. This step is very delicate as you have to be careful that nothing breaks while you are dismantling. You also have to be careful that you are dealing with the right spots. Get a screw driver or pliers and separate the pieces. After the pieces have been separated, detach the upholstery carefully from each piece.
- Cut the print: Using the old upholstery fabric that has been detached from the chairs, cut out the pieces needed from the African fabric. Place the old fabric on to the new one and cut out pieces in the same shape and size.
- Cover the chairs: After cutting out the new fabric, cover each component of the chair with its corresponding piece. This is where you’re strong glue handy so you can keep the edges of the fabric on the chair components. The new fabric should be tight and firm against the pieces so that the chairs do not look wrinkly when you are done. For some fabrics, you might have to use two layers or more as they may not be thick enough for upholstery.
- Reassemble the pieces: Once all the components have been recovered, it is time to reassemble the chairs. Usually the chairs originally are assembled using screws and nails, you should do the same. Screw and nail pieces back where they belong. At the beginning of this article, it was mentioned that you should have screws and nails handy, this would be in case you lose some of the original ones or if they are too weak to be put back inside.
Once you are done reassembling your chairs you are good and ready to enjoy your bright and vibrant living room.
