Hi! Long time lurker here, brought out of lurkdom by the gauntlet flung at my feet. Yeah, Runninginplace, I get it! In 1992 I saved my nickels and purchased the sofa of my dreams, a slipcovered sofa. The visions of being able to wash those fitted slipcovers danced in my head. I had slipcovers made for a chair that I already owned. I was going to be in heaven! Sigh... clean furniture... yes.

Fast forward to 2011. 4 years ago, I gave my slipcovered sofa and chair to DS and his wife because wrestling those huge darn slipcovers on and off my prized furniture was laborious. But the kicker was the amount of time it took to dry those slipcovers. Multiple cycles in the dryer with refluffing/repositioning between cycles. Then more laborious wrestling to redress the furniture. I hate it when dreams don't match reality!

My take on your article is that sure, it can be done. All you need is a housekeeper to do the slipcover washing, and one of those nice laundry setups with 2 washers and dryers to that when you are washing and drying load after load of slipcovers, you can also do the real laundry. Oh, and while you're at it, purchase a second set of slipcovers so that when you are washing the dirty ones, you don't have to look at your naked furniture. ;)

Real life? Well, in my world, slipcovers were a whole lot more work than I ever imagined. But they sure were nice when they were fresh and clean! Thanks for throwing the gauntlet down this morning. I was actually thinking about slipcovering a chair that bores me. Eh, maybe not!

Anniecat

DD1 furnished her SF apartment from Shabby Chic. She had a pink and white slipcover for sofa, green and white for chair. The sofa was white denim and she washed it probably once a month. I now have it, and with a cat napping on it during the day (in a guest bedroom) the cushion covers get vacuumed weekly and washed once a month (needs it more than that, but no one sees but me....)

DD1 has been living the SC lifestyle for 8 years now (even worked for Rachel after graduation), and has gone to a white/pink to a more adult color scheme - still light, but not white. She still washes slipcovers every few months.

She has been helping someone she knows furnish his home. He's ordered sofa and chairs with white slipcovers. He has two small children. Her response was "his housekeeper will be doing the laundry."

So no, I do not think, in any form or fashion, can a white house (or room) be kept clean with there are pets, children or some husbands involved.

I am heading down a whiter road but am not there yet (nor do I ever want all white everything) and here's what I've noticed:

I have cream colored area rugs. Got them because they were cheap and I knew I didn't want to spend a ton of money w/ kids and pets. Just knew I didn't want babies laying on cold hard wood. Still have them - they're gross and my next rug purchases will be indoor/ outdoor ones because yes, I still love the look of lighter rugs. Technology has caught up to my needs in that area.

White Slipcovers? Yeah, I'm going for it but ONLY when I can afford an extra set of slips. A wise slipcover owner once mentioned in passing that I should have 2 sets for 1 piece that way when one hits the wash the other can immediately be put on. I don't mind wrangling the washing machine/ dryer w/ large items. Never really have minded - whew! Oh, and I don't care about wrinkles.

White walls? Well at this point it is not uncommon to come into my home anyways and find a row of children lined up at a wall w/ a bucket of soapey water and scrubbie sponges. Doesn't matter that my walls are a combo of white, grey and brown - there's crayon on them at any given time. Sometimes it comes off and most of the time I just count down the days until they 'get it'. I know that day will come - it did w/ the 1st one.

White trim and cabinets? DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For the life of me I can't figure out why these people around me can't figure out how to use a doorknob or cabinet pull. Oh, and that place on the white door frames where we hold onto as we step over the babygate. GROSS! Yes it's all easily cleaned off but I hate doing it! Love the look of white trim and doors but if I were going to hire someone to do anything in my home it would be just to clean my trim in the kitchen.

I have never tried it, but I do admire the look! I know my house keeping limitations. White would have me on an endless treadmill of cleaning. Which I'm already on, come to think of it.

In order for me to decorate in white, I would need my home situated on top of utilidors like Disney. Every night my kingdom would be hosed down and the dirt sucked down pneumatic tubes.

We have a lot of white in our kitchen, but we don't have kids. Our knotty pine paneling is white, the cabinets are white, and the PO's put in blue ceramic floor tiles with WHITE grout (what were they thinking?). They also had pets, at least one dog plus ccat.

We use the vent hood when we cook. Wiping the cabinets isn't that bad. Maybe it's because we don't have too many of them.

Stanley Steemer comes to steam clean the tile grout. It looks great after they leave. This year sealed it. This was around the holidays, and those areas look great.

Also have white tiles in the bathroom. I clean the grout with white vinegar and then seal it.

No, I would not even try a white couch with one black cat.

Add me to the list of people who is discovering the darker side to white. Many years ago I bought an ivory linen sofa and love seat that sat in the formal living room of my old house and never got used. Both pieces were still in great condition when we moved into our new home last summer. I had fallen in love with all the white rooms I was seeing in magazines and was pretty excited that some of my existing furniture would transition well to our new house.We no longer have a formal living room so the ivory sofa and love seat are in now in our great room / family room where we spend most of our time. Since it is now just DH and myself I was comfortable making the switch to white furniture. I love the look of the sofas against the hardwood and it is a great a blank canvas for my decorating mood swings but after six months they are already starting to look a little dingy just from my DH sitting on the couch in his blue jeans. ( Maybe DH should stand for "dirty husband" LOL). Decorating in that room is still very much a work in progress but I am already exploring options for replacing or slip covering both couches. Actually, I had been seriously considering slipcovers until reading this thread.

I still LOVE the look but I would like to hear some practical solutions for having white without the frustration.

I have 3 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats, lizards and fish (they are the cleanest!) and could never imagine living in a white home. To me, they are unrealistic, magazine only homes. My parents have white walls in their house and every time we visit, I cringe at the thought of my kids in their home; they do as well. You can always tell when we have visited; dad keeps a can of paint for touch ups nearby.

I am sure it works for some, but I don't have a housekeeper, I do have 3 very active kids who are into every sports imagineable, love to have friends over at our house.

Our house is the one that has kids over to hang out as much as possible, has kids sleeping over all the time sprawled all over floors, chairs and sofas. We may not have a magazine perfect home, but we do have a comfy one. With our crew, I just could not fathom white or off white. I do enjoy looking at pics, but to me they aren't our lifestyle, nor do homes in all white appear warm and inviting to me. I do envision a creamy, off white kitchen somewhere in my future though; it's a dream of mine.

Our house is not pristine, but then we do have a home that kdis feel like they can come to and relax in which is more important to me than anything.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Yeah, right! Oh how I love the look myself, but I've resigned myself to the fact that unless it is only me and no animals or DH, I can never have that look.

DH is a bull in a china shop. Never on purpose, that is just how he is. We've got four dogs, and four cats. I live in the house of fur. Our family room sofa is fur colored. I have to put sheets on everything when the kids come to visit, as 3 of them are are allergic.

I purposely chose to not go with white. I have one room that has white trim that is going to be painted soon. Oh, I have to confess, my MB is a cream color with black accents...that has managed to stay nice, primarily because DH uses the guest bath.

I once tried white slipcovers and a SC look. I put up a baby gate to keep animals out of the LR, but DH spilling coffee on it on a peaceful Sunday morning, or him 'not thinking' and sitting on it while talking on the phone while wearing his work clothes...yeah. I washed them and sold them at a significant loss. Never again.

I have one red slipcovered sofa. The slipcover goes on in Dec. and remains until June. It's a chore taking off and putting on. Cannot imagine doing this once a month. Love the all white slip look, but no way!

I have always wondered about that too. Alittle too pristine for normal families to deal with I would think but will follow this thread with interest. It makes a good photo but I don't see it happening if you live in the country with dirt and alittle bit of concrete.
Bonnie

I'm a single person and couldn't even keep a yellow leather sofa clean in an apartment, so no white for me.

Hyper gardening fanatic mom, 2 hyper outdoorsy kids, and 2 hyper indoor/outdoor dogs here. I think it would take about a week for folks to assume I had tan furniture permanently. White walls would be out of the question.
AKA :"Wow PJ, when did you do sponge painting 3' up the wall in brown?"
I can't tell you how many times I've tracked mud/leaves across a newly cleaned floor. I can't even blame it on the kids.

Anniecat, Thanks for coming out of lurkdom to post. I loved reading what you had to say.

Thanks to all of you other posters for helping me to keep my desire for white slip covers in check. Like you, I have been seduced by the many blogs and catalogue pictures. In this case, I guess the dream is better than the reality.

I think it can be done. With slipcovers you can wash. Not to say you won't have to wash them often - you might - but it can be done. There was a discussion of this a while back on the Nesting Place blog - she slipcovered a sectional sofa in white - and has 3 boys, a husband and now a lab (black or chocolate - can't remember). She's shown many pics of her boys all over furniture, etc. and I think they eat a good bit in the living room. So, she probably washes her slipcovers often. We did creme colored slips in our sunroom late summer/early fall and I am just now thinking it might be time to wash them. But it's just hubby and myself and one small dog - who does go in and out. So, I don't have to wash as often as some would. With small kids/pets I wouldn't have white upholstered furniture, but I can see how the slipcovers would work.

tina

There are some very soft Sunbrella type fabrics now that might make living with the white easier. We have a very chic and plush Sunbrella fabric on the furniture in our exterior courtyard and while we were on vacation my mom kept dragging it in because she didn't think it was exterior fabric!

Granted, you'd have to have slipcovers *made* in Sunbrella and that surely doesn't negate the physical issue of switching them.

I think I am just trying to convince myself that I can do white slipcovers in my not so formal formal living room. :-)

A good friend had fitted white cotton duck (or perhaps denim?) slipcovers on her sofas for years...and she had FOUR CHILDREN. She washed 'em once a week and bleached as necessary...and line-dried 'em. And her family lived in their LR.

She did have a "no juice in the LR rule." But that was about it.

OxyClean is the secret to washing white slipcovers and keeping them WHITE. No bleach - ever. It's what they use in the SC stores.

mjsee, I gotta ask... was your friend employed outside her home? Gotta love a climate where slipcovers can be dried outside weekly year round, certainly not the case where I live.

I adore the look of white slips! I just don't like to work that hard. Now, those Sunbrella fabrics might lure me back in to the slips fold.

So glad I'm not the only one who just isn't white worthy! I had actually forgotten to mention-or maybe blocked it out of my mind-that I had my entire house painted white when we moved in. Oh yes. The whitest white I could possibly find. And then I spent the next two decades wiping and sponging and eventually snapped back to sanity and painted everything silver sage.

And yes, I too admire and yearn when I see those pristine immaculate white interiors. Especially love the combination of white with dark wood floors.

Alas, the love will remain unconsummated, at least until I return in my next life as a orphaned, fabulously wealthy single duchess with a staff of servants but no pets or offspring :).

Ann

My kids are grown and don't live at home, but still can't imagine *me* with everything white. I have a dog, and 3 cats who spend most of their time on my bed, plus a GS who's 4 and loves to come to Grandma's house, and throw in a baby sister who will be walking in a matter of months. My home is a place that I want my family to be able to enjoy and not have to watch the kids 24/7, or worry about one of the adult kids spilling a drink on any of that gorgeous white!

Let that sweet young thing who is moving into her first apartment and dreaming of the day she can have her all-white room or rooms. After 1 glass of red wine is spilled, she'll realize it looks better in the magazines. ;o)

We have mostly cream colored walls, light beige/gray tile in most all of the house with WHITE grout (PO's did that, not me) and frankly, it's a lot of work. Especially that white grout. When it's perfectly clean, it's stunning, but that grout doesn't get or stay that clean with just mopping.

I have a husband and cats, and we live in the country. We do a lot of work outdoors, and even though we try to be careful, it gets messy. All of those white baseboards show every speck of cat hair and scuffs.

Part of the house has paneling, stained wainscoting and stained trim. Easy as pie to keep clean. At least *looking* clean. When we first moved in, I was all set to paint it all white, and thank goodness I didn't. Is it "dated"? Don't know or care, becauese it's staying.

White slipcovered furniture? Not unless we're hiring a housekeeper to vacuum and wash it all!

We used to live a pretty white life in our condo. Does anyone remember that IKEA commercial with the couple in the all-white living room who wondered, "Are we too white?" That could have been us. The carpet was light, one sofa was white, the loveseat pale. The kitchen was white, as were the cabinets and appliances. It was just the two of us, though, and parakeets (potentially dirty, but small), and we take off our shoes at the door. Yes, there was flying red wine and chicken tikka masala, but that's where Oxyclean and one of those little hand-held carpet cleaners (Bissell?) came in handy. The saving grace was that the big, most used white couch was leather.

One of our perpetual conversations around here is the whole can-a-real-family-live-in-a-white-home?

Depends on how one defines "real". My mother had an off-white sofa (way over 100" long that monster was!) until she was in her 60's. Carpet was either off-white or pale celery. Walls colors varied, but were always very nearly white. The bedrooms were more colorful. At 15, I redid my bedroom in ivory satin with black and hot pink accessories. The rug was ivory. None of it was especially hard to keep clean, but we were all extremely tidy people. I did the house cleaning and cooking when I was a kid, so I really do know what was required.

We probably wouldn't have qualified as "real". It never occurred to me to mark a wall except for a little mark to hang a picture. In fact, when I had my own home and decided to paint a large graphic on the hall wall, I struggled to make a large mark with my pencil. I just knew that the phone would ring and that my mother would be on the other end asking me what the heck I thought I was doing scribbling on the walls!

If you want something that's real pill to take care of, you could go with the plum (purple leaning toward red) carpet that my mother chose after my father died. Her rooms were always drop-dead gorgeous, but you could watch the lint settle on that carpet. On the other hand, I guess vacuuming twice a day was good exercise!

anniecat--no, she wasn't. And yes, we are in NC...so one can pretty much dry outside year-round.

Well, my cousin has always done her living rooms and kitchen/dining rooms in white. ALL white, from the furniture to the drapes to the carpet to the walls, several times. Her rooms are always calm and beautiful, and amazingly completely different from each other. Not fussy, sometimes formal, sometimes not, all done with shape and texture. Her art on the walls changes a bit, some of it stays but in a different place.

In forty or so years she's done this at least 5 times, so though I've never seen any signs of shabbiness or wear in her house, maybe that's why she's done it that often, or maybe she's just bored. She raised two dtrs (both certifiable BRATS), but they mainly lived in their family room. She always entertains in her LR, says they read and watch TV in there when the kids were in the FR and she certainly cooks in her white kitchens, but for the most part they used their family room. She just likes white. And it's gorgeous!

I love white. I've always loved white. It's my favorite color . . . and no comments about it actually being the absence of color; I know what it is technically, but it's still my favorite color. Because of that, we have some pretty white (well, warm cream) rooms in our home. And they work wonderfully . . . with some reservations ;^D

First of all, we're not weird, uptight or O/C about cleaning. In fact, we're probably a bit more laid back than many people. We love putting our feet up on our sofas and coffee tables, read in bed on top of the comforters any time we feel like it (which is a lot, being a family of book lovers), and eat in pretty much every room except bathrooms (LOL).
The reservations?
Wall color: All walls are painted a warm cream color in a good quality, washable paint. Stark white, which has a blue cast to it, would be too cold and harsh IMO.
The positive: our art work looks great and so do we in rooms that color. I think the right warm cream walls makes everybody look better. And, I like the sereneness it adds to the rooms. Plus, adobe walls look gorgeous painted a warm cream and most homes tend to paint them like that. here's the foyer to our MBR, as an example:
{{gwi:1588722}}
The negative: our dobie leans up against the walls to catch the warm sun and leaves dirty areas on the walls. With very washable paint, though, I just wash it off but it does happen with great regularity. The reality is that it would happen even if the walls were any not-dark color.

The furniture: I have two matching cream colored linen blend sofas in our living room and I LOVE them. We bought them in June 2003 and they still look great. I have them professionally cleaned every year, but we do use this room daily, to read, visit, listen to music and/or look at the views (which are killer from there). But, I would never have a white or light colored rug or floor anywhere! All our floors are brick. This is a real adobe home in the mountains of New Mexico. We track in a lot of dirt, but most stops at the mats by every door. We pretty much never take off our shoes when we come inside, though. I do have a rule of no shoes on the furniture or beds, but that's it. No big dogs on the furniture either, but this doesn't include our 11-pound Tibetan Spaniel who's an inside dog. She doesn't leave dirt, as we wash her frequently, but she does leave a LOT of dog hair. I'm not obsessive about it and vacuum it off once a week.
Negatives: with white/cream sofas, you need a fabric that you can easily wash most spots off with water. Our is like that; without it, they would be a nightmare to keep clean! If you have dogs you allow to lie on sofas, white ones are not practical. If you have kids, you'd better have a family room with sturdy, dark colored furniture, as well. My two kids have always used our family room to watch TV and hang out with family and friends in. I was smart not to have a TV in the living room, but we all do head out there to read, etc. As for little kids and white, DD wrote all over my white sofas twice with a ballpoint pen when she was three and once with a stick of blue chalk. All three times required professionally cleaning, but it did come out . . . thankfully!

Cabinets, etc. When we had this house built, all our custom cabs were white-washed pine (supposed to be ash, but that's another story). They looked great in the beginning, but yellowed after a while which wasn't pretty. I've since been told that the yellowing is pretty common, so take heed if you're thinking of going that route. They look dirty and /or worse quicker with fingerprints, chips and the like. They also look more casual than what we ultimately wanted.

So, our family room has cream walls, but sturdy Western brown leather furniture, brick floors and a dark Oriental rug.
After 14 years with the white-washed cabs in the kitchen, we had them torn out and new dark cherry ones installed. Still kept the cream walls, and brick floors and went with bright New Mexican accessories.
The living room has cream colored walls and sofas, with dark tapestry throw pillows, brick floors, dark Oriental rug, and dark tables and chairs.
All 3 bathrooms have cream walls, brick floors and white-washed cabs (that we still have to eventually replace). All the accents are dark colors in 2 and pastel in ours. BTW, in this pic (taken in the evening) everything looks more yellowish than it really is; it's all a warm cream with no strong yellow cast:
{{gwi:1588723}}

Our MBR has the same walls and floors with cream comforter and drapes and dark furniture. I've replaced the comforter in this pic with a cream matelasse one, but it's still a white-on-white bedroom that we love.
{{gwi:1588724}}
Living Room:

So there you have an argument FOR white/cream rooms, but with reservations: washable walls and fabrics, darker wood furniture, cabinets, floors and rugs . . . and I guess, some good common sense as to if they'd work with you and your family. But, they've been working here for the past almost-18 years.
Lynn

I've always wanted to ask this question, esp. about beadboard kitchen walls painted white. Currently, I have white standing cupboards and white trim in my kitchen. Not only do I have to spot clean the back door around the knob and at the bottom, but also cupboard doors around handles at least every couple of weeks, I need to repaint so often, because I rub the paint off! Don't get me wrong though, I do love the look of white.

I'm also going to go with a creamy white, almost yellow for the walls. But I bet I still end up wiping down baseboard all the time.

I have read a few articles where people have talked about how they wash their slipcovers weekly/monthly and do fine with white and kids. BUT - how do their splicovers look ok? Washing fabric that much is bound to result in it breaking down, I would think??

I've heard the same thing, Chris~ that the slipcovers start looking shabby after a year or so of frequent washings. I've also heard that they're hard to get back on.

I do have a question, though: who makes the best, longest-lasting , washable slipcovers for sofas? I can see buying two for everyday use and taking them off for holidays and company . . . maybe.
Lynn