What Is Bouclé? How Bouclé Chairs Wear and How to Clean Them

The yarn is twisted so that small loops form along its length, and the fabric is woven from it. Bouclé was traditionally made from wool; much of the bouclé on furniture today is polyester or a blend.

Our Dolly bouclé is 100% polyester at 480 g/m², OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certified, in Ivory, Greige and Black. In French it is usually called bouclette; it is the same looped fabric.

Martindale measures how a fabric stands up to rubbing. Bouclé has two weak points that a rub test does not show: a loop can catch on a ring, a zip or a claw and pull, and small pills can form where you sit most.

Dolly is graded 3-4 for pilling, on a scale where 5 means no pilling, so some light pilling can appear on the most-used part of the seat. Ease a caught loop back into the weave rather than pulling or cutting it, and the surface keeps its look for years.

No fabric is completely claw-proof. Claws catch on long, loose loops and pull them; a short, dense loop gives them less to hook into. The texture also hides hair between vacuums, where a flat, dark fabric shows every one.

With small children, bouclé needs a little more attention than vegan leather: a spill has to be blotted before it sinks between the loops. If spills are a daily event, vegan leather is the easier choice; our guide to the best fabric for dining chairs compares all three of our fabrics.

Scrubbing pulls and flattens the loops and spreads the mark. Work from the edge of a stain inwards, let the fabric air-dry, and avoid bleach, solvents and hot water.

The full routine is in our guides to cleaning upholstered dining chairs, cleaning an armchair and bouclé bar stools.

The color decides how much everyday use shows, more than the weave does. The chart below compares our three bouclé colors.

On our Karin and Erik, only the seat is bouclé, upholstered over a plywood core in a solid oak frame. The parts that hands and feet touch are lacquered oak that wipes clean, and the seat can be swapped for an oak one later, or the other way round.

On Isabell, the seat and the backrest are upholstered to full height, so your back rests on bouclé too. Our guide to oak dining chairs covers the oak frames.

Among our dining chairs, Isabell and Bella come in bouclé on black steel, and Karin and Erik with a bouclé seat on solid oak. Our bar stools Freja, Philip, Svea and Bruno, on steel, and Ted and Carl, on oak, come in it too, and so do the armchairs Kent and Einar and the benches Wilma, Alva and Anton.

For every bar stool and color, see our guide to bouclé bar stools; for the benches, our upholstered bench guide. Order fabric samples to see the colors at your own table.