How to Clean Your Office Chair – 5 Different Ways
You regularly have your office cleaned: the floors are vacuumed, mopped, and waxed to a crystal clear shine, the windows are always fingerprint-free, and your desk is free from clutter. Your files are organized, the communal areas are disinfected daily, and the bathrooms are deodorized.
However, there is one place you may have forgotten – your office chair! You sit at your desk all day, completely immersed in work that you may forget that your office chair gets filthy over time. All that sweat, moisture, and dirt that gets into your office chair can cause stains and odor, which is appalling, if not a health hazard.
Give your office chair a good, deep clean, and refresh the material of your chair with our 5 ways to clean, sanitize, and deodorize common chair materials! You’ll never have to worry about the embarrassment of sitting in a smelly office chair again!
1. Cleaning Fabric Office Chairs
There are plenty of tutorials on how to clean fabric office chairs online, but one of our favorite ways to clean an office chair is to surface clean it. By surface cleaning, you don’t have to wait long for the chair to dry, and you don’t need any fancy tools or gadgets to keep it clean.
Simply take a lint brush or a vacuum cleaner to remove any dust and hairs, and use a cloth dampened with soap and water to wipe clean. The soapy water will pick up any dirt pieces, while the cloth traps them so they don’t plunge deeper into your chair. Do this daily to remove general dirt, and your office chair should look and smell clean!
We also recommend doing a deep cleaning of your office chair, as the fluffy interior can hide the majority of the dirt that gets trapped inside. You will need to find a hot, sunny day to do this so the chair can dry completely. Wash the chair like you would a piece of furniture, and use a wet vacuum to remove excess moisture. Let the chair dry under the sun before using.
2. Cleaning Leather Office Chairs
Leather chairs have the advantage of being non-porous, which means they can’t trap dirt inside as easily as fabric chairs do. A simple wipe down with a soft cloth, and a leather cleaner should do the trick, as long as you go over every nook and cranny of your leather office chair.
Leather materials, both real and synthetic, need an extra step to keep the material supple and less prone to breaking. Use a leather conditioner to lock in the moisture to your leather chair. It is animal skin after all, and drying out will cause leather to crack as the skin starts to decay. A leather conditioner should keep your chair in good condition for a longer period of time.
3. Cleaning Mesh Office Chairs
Like fabric chairs, mesh office chairs can be washed clean for a thorough deep cleaning. Unlike fabric office chairs, mesh ones take only a fraction of the time to dry, as the thin netting allows air to pass through easier. Mesh office chairs are favored for their cooling ability that allows air flow to pass through the material, and dries moisture quickly.
Clean your mesh office chair similarly to your fabric office chair, but be careful not to scrub the mesh too much to avoid ripping the material. Place the chair in front of a fan to dry, and allow the chair to completely dry before using. Alternatively, you can use a cleaning spray of vinegar, lemon peel, and water to clean your mesh office chairs.
4. Disinfecting Office Chairs
Need to disinfect your office chair? Nothing works better than a steam cleaner! Steam cleaning uses high heat and vapor pressure to lift stains, kill microbes, and get rid of any mold spores from your office chair. Fabric, leather, and mesh chairs can all be disinfected through steam cleaning, but take precautions to avoid damaging leather chairs.
You can also use rubbing alcohol, but test it on a small, inconspicuous spot first before proceeding to disinfect the rest of the chair. Take note that rubbing alcohol and common commercial disinfectants may discolor fabric and leather chairs, and may damage plastic parts as well.
5. Deodorizing Office Chairs
It’s embarrassing to have a smelly office chair, but it is also completely normal. The smell coming from your office chair is due to moisture from sweat and other liquids, which odor-causing bacteria feed off of. A musty smell, on the other hand, indicates mold that grows when your chair is never properly dried.
Deodorize your chair with baking soda and essential oils! Place a few drops of essential oil onto a cup of baking soda – just enough to give a pleasant smell without oversaturating the baking soda. Mix the ingredients well, and sprinkle all over your chair. Let the powder sit overnight, then vacuum up the excess. You’ll have a pleasant-smelling chair in no time!
