Furniture Slipcovers Are Making Their Comeback

Furniture slipcovers have a bad rap. Maybe it's because they can be so frumpy, the perfect foil for a finely upholstered antique. (We all know someone who self-slipcovered, bunching and stapling new fabric over the old until the couch resembles a cumulous cloud rather than a furnishing.) Or perhaps it's some uppity distain for what's practical, as by any other name they're just giant bibs, designed to simultaneously protect and hide the look of a begrudgingly inherited antique. But a trend towards more tailored slipcover designs, influenced at least in part by the increasingly popular, elegantly relaxed style of the Belgian designer Axel Vervoordt, proves that it's not all tufted and shirring. And for that matter, it's not all sofas—you can effectively slipcover any number of furnishings to make them more at home in the scheme of a room. Here are some of our favorite ways to employ tailored furniture slipcovers in the home (couches not included, because you know how to do that):

Club chairs, wing chairs, any chair with a shape you'd like to pronounce and legs that would look nice peeking out from under the cover.

Outfitted in matching slipcovers, dining room chairs take on a far less formal feel (and, of course, you can toss them in the wash when spaghetti sauce lands on one).

Opt for a full custom cover to go over the whole frame, or just a folded piece to be tied over the headboard and footboard.

Coffee tables, accent tables, demi-lunes, and the like can be easily slipcovered—or draped with a material you like—with a pane of galvanized glass added on top to ensure a hard-working surface.

Even poufs, if you fell for that trend and are now wishing you hadn't.