Upholstery Fabric Yardage Calculator: Chairs, Sofas, Cushions and Headboards

Choose the piece of furniture, or switch to custom pieces and enter your own cut sizes. Furniture figures are planning estimates from the ranges printed on common upholstery yardage charts. Headboards, box cushions and custom pieces are laid out from real cut sizes, so you can see every cut.

Machines for chairs, cushions and slipcovers

Three to ten yards of upholstery weight fabric, welt cord and zippers call for a machine that feeds thick layers evenly.

Intermediate

Janome

Janome HD3000 Heavy Duty Sewing Machine with Hard Case

$529.00

A heavy-duty home machine with adjustable foot pressure and a hard case.

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Intermediate

Consew

Consew CP206RL Portable Walking Foot Machine

$524.95

A portable walking foot machine with a built-in 110V motor for thick seams.

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Expert

Juki

Juki DU-1181 Single Needle Walking Foot Industrial Machine with Stand and Servo Motor

$1,724.62

A walking foot industrial machine with a 3/4 HP servo motor and knee lift.

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Prices change often, so confirm on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

How much upholstery fabric do I need?

Upholstery yardage is harder to predict than garment or curtain yardage because every piece of furniture is built differently. Two armchairs with the same footprint can differ by two yards depending on whether they have a loose seat cushion, a skirt, rolled arms, welt cord on every edge or an outside back that wraps around the frame. That is why upholstery charts print ranges, and why professional upholsterers measure each piece before they quote.

The calculator uses two methods and tells you which one it used:

• Chart items (chairs, sofas, ottomans) use the low and high figures that appear, with small variations, on the upholstery yardage charts printed by fabric retailers and workrooms. They assume 54 inch plain fabric with no repeat. The calculator plans on the high end of the range, because running out halfway through a chair is far worse than having a spare yard for pillows.
• Computed items (headboards, box cushions and your custom pieces) are laid out from real cut sizes on your fabric width, one row of pieces at a time, the way you would place them on the cutting table.

Upholstery fabric yardage chart for furniture

Every row below comes from the same function as the calculator. The repeat columns show how quickly a patterned fabric adds yardage, using the allowance explained further down.

Headboards assume a panel 2 inches wider than the mattress, 30 inches of exposed height, 2 inch foam and 3 inches wrapped to the back. Full, queen and king panels are wider than 54 inch fabric, so the calculator railroads them, turning the fabric sideways so there is no seam. That works for plain fabric and railroaded prints; an up-the-roll print would need a center width and two side pieces instead. A queen headboard comes to 2 yd this way.

How do you calculate upholstery fabric with a pattern repeat?

A repeat forces waste. Every cushion, seat and inside back needs the motif centered, so each cut starts at the same point in the design, and the fabric between the end of one piece and the start of the next usable motif is lost. On average that loss is about half a repeat per cut, plus one repeat to place the first motif.

For chart items the calculator estimates the number of cuts by assuming an average cut of about 27 inches, then adds half a repeat per cut and one extra repeat. A sofa charted at 16 yards is about 22 cuts; with a 13 1/2 inch repeat that adds about 162 inches, for 20 1/2 yd in total. Published advice for patterned upholstery fabric varies from adding 10 percent to adding a full repeat per cut, so treat the repeat figure as a planning estimate and confirm with your workroom for large motifs.

For custom pieces the math is exact rather than averaged. Take six dining chair seats cut at 22 x 22 inches on 54 inch fabric:

1. Pieces across: 54 divided by 22 is 2 pieces side by side.
2. Cuts: 6 pieces at 2 across is 3 cuts of 22 inches, or 66 inches.
3. Yards: 66 inches is 1 7/8 yd after rounding up to the next eighth.
4. With a 13 1/2 inch repeat: each cut rounds up to 27 inches, and one repeat is added, for 2 5/8 yd.

Notice that six seats bought together need 1 7/8 yd, while six times the per-seat chart figure is 4 1/2 yd. The chart figure assumes you are covering one seat, where pieces cannot share a cut. Buying for a set lets seats sit side by side, which is why a cut layout is worth doing for any multi-piece job.

How much fabric do I need for cushion covers?

Box cushions are the most common thing people cover themselves, and they are easy to calculate exactly: two panels the size of the cushion plus 1/2 inch seam allowance on every edge, and a boxing strip as tall as the cushion plus seam allowances, long enough to go all the way around plus 2 inches for the join. Boxing strips are cut across the width of the fabric and joined end to end.

A zippered back boxing panel adds a few inches of strip, and self-made welt cord adds bias strips: plan roughly a quarter yard per cushion for welt, more on a patterned fabric. For simple knife-edge pillow covers, the cushion cover yardage chart is quicker.

What sewing machine do you need for upholstery?

The limit in upholstery sewing is not the fabric itself but the stack: two layers of heavy fabric plus a welt cord wrapped in two more layers is six thicknesses at the seam. A standard home machine will often stall, skip stitches or push the top layer ahead of the bottom one, which is why cushions sewn at home often end up with twisted boxing strips.

For occasional cushions and dining seats, a heavy-duty home machine is enough. The Janome HD3000 has adjustable presser foot pressure, and a leather or heavy needle such as Schmetz leather needles in size 100/16 helps on vinyl and faux leather. If you plan to cover full chairs and sofas, a walking foot machine feeds the top and bottom layers together. The Consew CP206RL is a portable walking foot machine with a built-in motor, while the Juki DU-1181 is a full walking foot industrial with a servo motor, a knee lifter and a 9 mm maximum stitch length, the kind of machine found in upholstery workrooms.

Space matters as much as the machine. A sofa's worth of fabric, fifteen yards or more, needs a long table to cut on and somewhere to rest the bulk while you sew. See our guide to the best industrial sewing machines for home use before you commit, since an industrial head, table and motor take up a permanent corner of a room.