I emailed Knoll technical support with no answer for two weeks, and surprisingly I am finding little information on the interweb, so I am asking you folks.
I recently bought a used 1966 dining set and the woven chair fabric is mildew stained. Has anyone had success removing stains from their chairs? If so please share your process. If you have failed at cleaning the fabric please let me know what NOT to do.
I was thinking bleach will destroy the fibers and was going to try baking soda and vinegar, maybe oxyclean or CLR?
What do you use to clean spot stains? Red wine, food, cocktails etc.
Thank you Please advise.
I don't own any of this furniture but I have a fair amount of experience with trying to remove mildew stains from stuff. I found this description of the fabric on Schultz furniture:
woven vinyl coated polyester mesh outlined by solid pure vinyl straps all sewn together with Gore™ Tenara® sewing thread (Teflon)
You can use bleach on vinyl but since this is vintage material there are likely to be tiny cracks in it that would expose the polyester core, and you should not use bleach on polyester. I don't know if bleach will weaken polyester (probably google-able) but it might discolor it. I know bleach will turn nylon yellow, so I'd avoid it, period.
There's a lot online about removing mildew stains from vinyl, including using stuff like white vinegar, baking soda, borax, and other common (and mild) household products.
Direct sunlight may also help, but if you're in a northern part of the world you will probably have to wait until summer to try that. You may need to use a combination of treatments. I'd probably start with something very mild, like scrubbing with baking soda, then leaving it in bright sun outside for a day or two.
You might also look into a 10% solution of benzoyl peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is often used to kill mildew but I don't know how good it is at removing the stain that remains---never tried it myself. I have used benzoyl peroxide on valuable vinyl items with indelible ink and marker stains and it worked really well---as in, the stains disappeared completely without any affect on the vinyl itself. I don't know how safe it would be on the exposed polyester core---I found some anecdotal evidence online that it does not bleach the color out of polyester, but not much else. (I also didn't look too hard.)
If you want to test benzoyl peroxide on a small area, you can buy a small amount in the form of Oxy-10 acne cream. There's also this product which I think has the same active ingredient: http://www.twinpines.com/remove-zit
It's made for use on vintage vinyl dolls from the same era as your furniture, though the dolls would be solid vinyl, no polyester involved.
I have some Schultz/66. My older Knoll/ Schultz pieces have a different vinyl mesh than do my newer Richard Schultz/66 pieces. The new style of mesh seems heavier in gauge. My lovely housekeeper scrubs it with a soft brush and a common cleaner called "Greased Lightening". No rinsing needed (I think?).
Hi,
Aunt Mark/61
(EDITED): to add a snappy of the cleaning product and the newer style mesh. Hi.
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