How to Fold and Store Chair Covers After Your Event

Achieving an elegant and glamorous event from top to bottom can easily be done by using chair covers. They're a small but important detail that help enhance and complete the look of your event's overall atmosphere. Without the right chair covers, your wedding or party chairs could distract from other beautiful décor elements. 

Even though they make a big impact chair, covers are affordable, easy to use, and can be reused time and time again, especially if you know how to fold chair covers and store them properly. They truly make a great addition to any special event! (If you need help finding the right chair cover make sure to read our article on How to Choose Chair Covers for Your Special Event to help make your event planning a piece of cake!)

Once your party is over, you might be left wondering where and how you're going to store your chair covers. Properly cleaning and storing your table linens, drapes, and chair covers is vital so you can get many uses out of them while keeping them in pristine condition. It is why we've created this helpful guide and step by step video tutorial to help you clean, fold, and store your chair covers!

There are several different ways in which you can fold and store a chair cover, based on the cover’s style and material. In today’s guide, we'll go over what we have found to be the most effective way to fold party chair covers, store them to avoid getting wrinkles, and maintain them in their finest shape for as long as possible. The folding instructions in this tutorial are shown on a polyester banquet chair cover but it works for many cover styles including banquet, standard folding, and LIFETIME folding chair covers in both spandex and polyester material. Let's get started!

What Is the Purpose of Chair Covers? 

Before delving into the pointers on how to care for chair covers for events in storage, explore their benefits first, which include the following:

• They protect the chairs from spills and stains, reducing clean-up time after an event and helping you prolong your chairs’ lifespan.
• They increase the chairs’ appeal, even if you have worn-out chairs under those covers. 
• They provide flexibility that chairs don’t, especially in terms of colors, styles, designs, and materials used, so they can match event themes easily. If you have a debutante who loves pink, you can effortlessly find pink chair covers at a trusted supplier like CV Linens. You can buy more pink-colored event supplies like pink tablecloths, pink faux flowers, and pink drapes, to name a few.
• They provide venues with a cohesive look since you can pick out chair covers that match the rest of the decor.
• They are easy to launder, dry, fold, and store. Proper care will give you the same fresh, crisp, clean chair covers you can use in future events.

Since the ultimate purpose of chair covers for a party is to keep everything aesthetic and conceal unsightly spots, such as stained old chairs, you should learn how to keep them in place. Here are some tips:

• Choose chair covers that will perfectly fit, and use large paper clips or safety pins to fasten the cover underneath the chair.
• Secure the chair covers to the legs or backrest with straps or elastic bands.
• Use chair ribbons or sashes around the chair’s backrest.
• Put non-slip rubber pads or grippers between the chair cover and the chair to stop the cover from slipping.

How to Fold Chair Covers

Chair covers can work magic for any type of event by adding color and style to the venue with different types of chairs in a variety styles and sizes to accommodate your event needs. Due to this, the shape of your chair covers may seem odd and difficult to fold but we have some easy tips to help you become a chair cover folding master in no time.

Our first tip for folding slip on chair covers is to have them cleaned and ironed before folding them to keep them in good clean condition while stored. This will make setting up for your next event a lot easier when your chair covers require minimal prepping to get them ready to use again!

Instructions

How to Store Chair Covers

Now that you know how to fold chair covers, you're ready to store them until it's time for your next event! Proper storage will certainly save you a lot of time when it comes to organizing and preparing your linens before an event. Here are some essential steps to follow in order to properly store your wedding chair covering!

Cleaning Your Chair Covers

Always make sure all your chair covers are clean before you store them. In fact, it's a good idea to clean or wash them right after your event. You should always avoid storing dirty or wet covers, doing so will cause mold damage or other issues to ruin your linens. Most of our chair covers are machine washable but you should always check the specs section of the chair covers product page on our website or our materials and care page to see how to launder your specific chair covers. 

Removing the Wrinkles From Your Chair Covers

You may think it's counterintuitive and unnecessary to iron your chair covers before storing them because they'll end up with some creases from the folding but ironing or steaming your covers is definitely recommended. Ironing your chair covers before storing them will actually help avoid creasing all over your chair covers and pesky deep set creases. This step actually saves you a lot of time later when you're ready to pull out your chair covers for another event!

Ways to Store Your Chair Covers

Storage Bins: After your chair covers are cleaned, ironed, and folded you can store them in storage bins, boxes, drawers, shelving, and more! Opt for storing your linens in a plastic container bin or something similar with a lid for easy access. If you have a lot of wedding linens, besides your chair covers, the wise thing to do is to invest in a special shelf or a closet that’s specially designed for these types of décor elements.

Hangers: If you prefer not to fold your chair covers too much to avoid creasing, you can easily store your covers by hanging them up. You can lightly fold them in half horizontally or vertically to fit the width of your hangers and store them up in a closet. You can use thin metal hangers, open sided hangers, or hangers with clips for this step!

Cardboard Tubes: Another alternative way to store your chair covers without folding them is to roll them up with tubes. This can easily be done using empty cardboard tubes by tightly rolling the fabric around the tube and securing it with an elastic band or ribbon. Once rolled up, they can be stored in any storage area either on it's side or standing up.

Ways to Transport Chair Covers Wrinkle-free

If you’ve taken your well-folded and stored chair covers from storage to prepare for your next event, it helps if you know how to transport them without causing wrinkles. Take note of these tips: 

Follow the original folding lines of the covers to avoid adding more wrinkles and creases.

Use padding to stack multiple foldable chair covers, like how you would handle wedding charger plates and other dinnerware pieces. Try thin towels, tissue paper, or plastic bags as a protective layer between covers.

Put the chair covers in garment bags. Avoid overcrowding them in the bag to prevent creasing, and try to hang the bags during transport.

Use hangers, especially for lightweight or stretchy chair covers, like the red spandex chair covers. You can also put the hangers in garment bags for added protection.

Do not compress the chair covers if you have no other choice but to put them in a box. Avoid stacking up too many of them in one box, and do not put heavy items on top of those boxes.

Unpack and hang the covers as soon as you arrive at the venue. Stretch, adjust the fabric, or use a fabric steamer on a low setting to remove any wrinkles.

Ideal Linen Storage Conditions

No matter how you choose to store your chair covers, you want to make sure your storage space keeps your linens safe from damage. Make sure that your storage area is cool, dry, and preferably properly ventilated. This will help your chair covers and other linens in storage avoid becoming damp which could create mold and mildew that will damage your linens.

When it comes to storing your linens it can be really helpful to organize them by color, pattern, and chair cover type. Organizing your chair covers by type is definitely a huge help as when they're folded and stored it's hard to tell what chair cover type your chair fits without unfolding it. Maximize your storage sections by using labels to identify the types of linens, cover types and colors!

In the same way you store linens like chair covers carefully, the same care should be practiced with storing the chairs and other event furniture. Keep the chairs covered in storage using the best materials, such as cotton sheets, furniture covers, drop cloths, or plastic covers. Consider the storage conditions, duration of the storage, and needs of the chairs. You can maximize the use of your chair covers if you can use them on well-stored chairs.

Wedding Linen Aftercare

As long as you keep these useful tips in mind on how to fold chair covers and store them, you can have wrinkle free ready to use linens for your next event in a blink of an eye! The best part is most of these helpful tips can be applied for other event linens such as napkins, tablecloths, overlays, table runners and more.

If you have any lingering questions or you need help finding the ideal linens or party supplies in bulk to help create a magical atmosphere for your special event, feel free to contact us via email at info@cvlinens.com or give us a call at (512-821-1178). We're always happy to help!

Are you a Visual Learner?

Watch our step by step video tutorial on how to fold a chair cover.

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