By Lyrokain in Ikea — Nov 1, 2023

Washing Landskrona Sofa Covers against all Odds

Washing seat covers of ikea sofa landskrona.

It is inevitable. Sooner or later you will spill something nasty on your sofa and you will need to wash its covers. Lucky you, if the covers are washable, such as those from the sofa Landskrona by Ikea. As the covers have zipper for easy removal, they are obviously washable. Right?

Well, they are in fact not meant to be washed. The blurb clearly states, they can't be machine washed, hand washed, bleached, tumble dryed or even dry cleaned. The manufacturer seems to think, stained covers are best to be replaced by new ones. Or maybe you are even supposed to buy a whole new couch.

A blurb with eight symbols stating what you must not do with the cushion cover.

As I was not willing to accept this, I decided to wash them anyway. While this is in fact possible, it is a little bit complicated and it takes quite a while for preparation. And here is how I did it.

The covers are tightly connected to the cushion with ribons made of polyamide fabric. One end of the ribbon is sewn to the cover tissue, the other end is threaded through the cussion.

The exposed lower side of the upholstery. There are twelve plastic disks that secure the ribons coming from the cover on the other side.

The cushion end of each ribbon has a plastic toggle that is threaded through a plastic disk to hold the whole thing in place.

Closeup of the disk. There is a brown plasic toggle on the end of the ribbon interlocked with the disk.

First I pulled the ribbon a little bit farther out of the upholstery to tilt the toggle so I could push it back through the disk and remove the latter.

Then I made a tool by detaching the tip of a ball pen and removing the reservoir.

The same toggle, but now with an improvised tool made from a green ball pen with the tip, the spring and the resevoir removed.

To free a ribbon, I put the toggle into the ball pen pipe and then push it all the way through the cushion.

The toggle is put into the opening of the tool in the authors hand.

This needs force and circular motion helps to find the exit opening on the other side.

The tool was punched through the channel of the ribbon in the upholstery. The end of the tool is still visible.

The tool exits the upholsterys upper side. The Toggle peeks out of the pipe and the ribon is dangling from there. The end attached to the seat cover is not in the picture.

After repeating this eleven times the cover is finally free. I threw it into the washing machine with some liquid detergent and used a cold wool program with tumbling at 1200 rpm.

The seat cover and a plasic jug with liquid detergent is sitting in a washing machine.

The display of the washing machine reads "0:39 kalt 1200". Theese are the default settings for the wool washing program.

But be careful if you don't have a Miele high end washing machine as we do. The drum of ours has exceptionally tiny drain holes.

The empty drum of the washing machine. The drain holes are quite small in diameter and they are interconnected with a honey comb like pattern to direct the water to the holes when tumbling.

In regular washing machines the drain holes are much larger and clearly pose the risk that ribbons toggles make it through one of the holes. If that happens, your sofa covers unfortunately need to stay in your washing machine for the rest of eternity.

To be on the safe side, close the covers zipper and make sure the ribbons are on the inside.

After tumbling I put the covers back on the cushions while they were still damp. This made them dry nice and fair without wrinkles. The procedure was of course the same as described above, just in the opposite direction.

The toggle is insertet into the ball pen tool, ready to punch it back though the upholstery.

The result left nothing to whish for. It looks all new and clean and nothing broke. So there is no doubt that also Landskrona covers can be washed.

Enter the Void