Upholstery vs chair caning
These rarely compete for the same chair. A drop-in seat frame wants upholstery; a Victorian bedroom chair with a ring of holes round the seat wants caning. The genuine decision is which craft to learn first, and the answer usually comes from the chairs available near you.
The decision this settles: You have a chair that is structurally fine and unusable, or you keep seeing them going cheap, and you are deciding which seat-restoring craft to learn — which in practice is decided by what kind of chair you keep finding.
Where they genuinely differ
Marked per row rather than overall — “better” only means something relative to a specific dimension.
| Point of difference | Upholstery | Chair caning |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to start | £120–£250: staple gun, webbing stretcher, ripping chisel, regulator, shears, plus foam and fabric | £30–£60: cane in a few widths, a soaking tray, pegs, a caning awl and a side cutterAdvantage here |
| Cost per chair | £40–£150 in fabric, foam and webbing, and good fabric can exceed the chair | £10–£25 in cane for a standard seatAdvantage here |
| Space needed | Room to turn a chair over and leave it out for days, plus a fabric cutting surface | A table, a bowl of water and a chair on your lapAdvantage here |
| Time per seatCaning is slow but uninterruptible in a pleasant way; upholstery is faster per hour but has a much higher ceiling of difficulty. | A drop-in seat in an evening; a full sprung armchair over weeks | 10–20 hours for a six-way hand-woven seat, spread over sessions because the cane must stay damp |
| Physical demandStripping an old chair is the genuinely unpleasant part of upholstery, and the tack dust from a Victorian piece is worth a mask. | Real — webbing stretching, hide-strip removal and hundreds of staples out by hand | Low, but hard on the fingertips and thumbs, and it wants good lightAdvantage here |
| What chairs it suits | Dining seats, armchairs, headboards, footstools, car and campervan seatingAdvantage here | Bentwood, bedroom and occasional chairs with a drilled hole pattern, plus rush and Danish cord as neighbours |
| How forgiving it is | Forgiving — staples come out and fabric can be re-stretched, though you may waste clothAdvantage here | Unforgiving in the middle — a mistake ten rows in usually means cutting out and starting the seat again |
| Where the skill goesCaners are scarce enough that competent ones are turning work away, which is not true of upholsterers in most towns. | Traditional sprung work, stitched edges, buttoning — a long and genuinely professional ladder | Six-way, blind caning, rush, seagrass and Danish cord; narrower but with real specialist demand |
Upholstery
Someone with a garage or spare room who wants to take on sofas, campervan seating and dining sets, and enjoys the destructive first day
Upholstery has the wider application by far — almost every padded thing in a house is within reach — and the traditional route is a lifetime craft.
More on UpholsteryChair caning
Someone in a flat with no workshop, a bentwood chair, and a liking for long, quiet, repetitive handwork
Caning needs a table and a bowl of water, costs almost nothing per chair, and the skill is rare enough to be genuinely useful to other people.
Last reviewed 2026-08-15. HobbyHQ does not declare a winner in comparisons — why.