DIY: Office Chair Makeover with Fabric

This is my desk chair.  It was in a photo on a previous post I did about organizing my creative space.  You can find more in my post, here, Getting Organized.   A few of you asked me if I was going to do a post about the chair.

So I decided, why wait – here is:

Office chair makeover 101

Here is the chair as I am taking the simple slipcover I made for it off the back.

You can see the typical office chair fabric on the back, not my style. I kept the polka dot fabric on for the photo, but that has the red fabric underneath, too.  I bought the chair because it was the right price and had lots of cool ergonomic features that I wanted.  I knew the minute I got it home it would be getting a makeover.

I keep a stash of  leftover fabric from previous projects and this black and white check and polka dot are from that stash.  I didn’t have enough of each to do the seat and back in the same fabric so I picked both since they coordinated.   You can see the slipcover I took off for these photos draped over the arm.

 I made the slipcover with my circa 1950’s Singer.  I am not a sewer, but this machine given to me by my mother-in-law works like a charm.  I like the surprise of a little detail, so I added striped piping.

I didn’t use a pattern, I just took the back measurements and made a “pillow case” style cover to slip over.  The back of the chair is slightly curved and I wanted it to look fitted, so I kept putting it back on (inside out) and pinning it, sewing more until I was happy with the fit.  A rectangular or square back chair would be easier.

How to Cover the Seat on an Office Chair:

For the seat, I un-screwed it and took it off the chair to make it easier to cover.  I simply cut the fabric to size plus extra to wrap around and staple to the underside of the chair.  I made sure the fabric was  taut and lined up as I stapled.  I am a display designer and our motto is “Whatever you can’t see can easily be faked or not so pretty”.

I did try to be a bit neat by folding the fabric under as you would a hem so no unraveled  threads would show.

Much better than the office fabric underneath.  When it gets dirty it is easy to take off and clean.   I should tell you that any fabric would do.  The polka dot on the seat is silk.  The check is cotton duck cloth.

How to Cover an Office Chair with a Molded Plastic Back:

Heather from My Frugal Family left a comment about her chair having a plastic back and not being able to cover it.

The following photos are of the chair I have on the opposite side of my partners desk.  It is from IKEA with a plastic back.

If you have a chair that looks like this, you can still cover the bottom in the same way as directed above.

For the back, if back doesn’t come off –  pry the plastic back away with a screwdriver or putty knife and push fabric in to secure  – or

Depending on your chair you can unscrew the back and carefully pull the plastic back from the upholstered front.

Then cover the upholstered side and snap the two sides back into place, then screw the whole thing back onto the chair.

There are 4 of these snaps. Line up the front and back and place on a hard surface and press hard until you hear all 4 snap back into place.

Update:

If you would like to see how I made my chair over again in green and white fabric check out this post: How to Make Over an Office Chair   I used paint and a throw rug…YES a throw rug!