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How to Clean A Gaming Chair

Gaming chairs are considered a luxury. They’re made of high-quality materials, and are both functional and aesthetically pleasing to look at. It comes as no surprise that brands such as Secret Labs, DXRacer, Lenovo, and Cougar to name a few.

To keep these chairs in tip-top shape, you need to keep them clean and properly maintained. You’re not dealing with regular office chairs here, after all. This article will show you how to clean a gaming chair, how to maintain their materials, and more.

How Do You Clean Gaming Chairs?

DXRacer-Air-Modular-Gaming-Chair-How-To-Clean-a-Gaming-Chair

It takes more than using a damp cloth to remove tough stains on your gaming chair. Sure, it may do the trick, but you’re probably doing more harm than good.

This section will discuss the general step by step guide for you to clean a gaming chair, and later on, we’ll show you how to maintain your gaming chair, regardless if it’s made from PU Leather, PVC leather, and so on.

First Step – Identify What Upholstery Your Gaming Chair Is Made Of

Before you clean your gaming chair, you have to know what upholstery is on it. You have to know what the chair is made of so you don’t end up damaging the material. There are different approaches to cleaning different materials, and we’ll talk about them in a while.

Gaming chairs are usually made up of one of the following upholstery materials:

Some gaming chairs might be a combination of different upholstery, so you’ll have to clean them separately. Your gaming chair’s manufacturer will provide you with whatever upholstery is used and probably some generic cleaning instructions.

Second Step – Use a Vacuum Cleaner To Remove All The Dust

Dyson V7 Trigger Cord-Free Handheld Vacuum Cleaner How To Clean a Gaming Chair

Now assuming you know what your gaming chair is made of, it’s time to start cleaning it. First thing you need to do is to remove all the dust, debris, and other small particles that could leave a smudge or cause further staining when touched by a wet cloth or cleaning solvent.

For mesh chairs or those with fabric upholstery, vacuuming can help remove the dust particles that’s embedded into the material. You can use a brush attachment for the vacuum cleaner over the fabric upholstery, or regular vacuum attachment for the mesh chairs.

If your chair is made from PU Leather or PVC Leather, there’s no need to use a handheld vacuum. You just use a regular feather duster, or use a microfiber cloth.

Third Step – Clean Upholstery With Solvent Solution or Water

Your gaming chair deserves better, and vacuuming and dusting can only do so much. When it comes to food stains, sweat stains, and other stains, you need to use water or solvent solution.

But how do you know if you need to use either? Simple. Look for the care tag that’s attached to your gaming chair. They’re usually found at the back or underneath the chair. You’re looking for one of two letters here: S or W.

S stands for solvent, and W stands for Water. If you see S/W, then the chair can be cleaned with either S or W.

PU Leather and PVC Leather (or any type of faux leather) chairs usually come with the W-tag, and mesh or fabric upholstery can use either. When you’re using a cleaning solvent for these tougher stains, gently blot over the stained area but never rub over it. If it’s fabric, you need to brush directly over the stains.

Fourth Step – Spot Cleaning For Tougher Stains

This is an optional step if the third step can’t get rid of the tough stains. If you still see some stains on problem areas even after you use a water or solvent solution, then you’ll need to spot clean them.

To spot clean these problem areas, you just need rubbing alcohol and cotton ball. Soak the cotton ball with rubbing alcohol first. But don’t dab on the area just yet. You need to find out if the alcohol can damage the material.

You can do a test by wiping a small area on the underside of the chair, or least a spot that’s out of sight. Wipe a small area and wait for a few minutes to determine if alcohol can damage the material. If it doesn’t, proceed to spot clean the affected area by gently blotting or rubbing the alcohol-soaked cotton swab.

Be careful with spot cleaning on a mesh chair because the material can get damaged easily.

Fifth Step – Wash The Frame, Base, and Armrests

Upholstery is clean by this step, but you’re not done cleaning gaming chairs just yet. Now you need to move on to the other parts of the chair, namely the base, frame, and armrest.

This is relatively easy because to clean a gaming chair’s armrest, base, and frame only requires warm water combined with mild detergent. Use a clean cloth to wash the surface and then proceed to wipe it dry with a paper towel or a dry cloth.

Be sure you’re not using the same damp cloth that you cleaned for the upholstery because you might be adding more dirt as opposed to removing them.

Sixth Step – Clean The Casters and Tighten Screws

After the base, armrest, and frame have been cleaned, it’s time to move on to the caster wheels. This is the most difficult part because the wheels gather lots of debris that may get embedded into the mechanism. These debris are often difficult to remove, especially if there are fur or carpet fabric lodged into it.

The first thing you need to do here is to flip your chair upside down first. Ideally, you want to start cleaning the casters first before you clean the upholstery and other parts because you might end up getting them dirty again.

Grab a vacuum cleaner and remove debris using the crevice tool. Once all the big debris and chunks of fur and hair are removed, use a soft cloth and wipe the caster wheels down with surface cleaner. For the inner parts, use a clean cloth soaked with rubbing alcohol. Use a paper towel to remove any moisture.

Once those are clean, be sure to lubricate the chair’s wheels with something like WD40 if you’re hearing squeaking noises or if the wheels don’t roll easily. Be sure to check for loose screws and bolts and tighten when necessary.

And voila! That’s how you clean a gaming chair.

How Do You Deep Clean A Fabric Gaming Chair?

My personal experience with fabric gaming chairs is that staining is inevitable. Spills, sweat stains, coffee stains, and even dried out dust particles can be hard to clean if they’ve been ignored for too long.

Part of learning how to clean a gaming chair is learning how to deep clean fabric materials. You may be using a faux leather chair now, but sooner or later, you’ll upgrade to the fabric ones.

To deep clean a fabric upholstery, you need to use baking soda. First, vacuum the chair like you would with any gaming chair.

Then once the dust particles and small debris are removed, it’s time to use baking soda. Using a microfiber cloth, work baking soda into the upholstery and let it stay on for 30 minutes.

Run the vacuum cleaner a second time to remove the baking soda. By this time, stains should have faded but they’ll still be there.

Apply a layer of baking soda once more using the microfiber. Then put the chair out in direct sunlight to completely dry and deodorize the upholstery.

Why Is Your Gaming Chair Dirty?

COUGAR Explore S Black Gaming Chair How To Clean a Gaming Chair

To better learn how to clean a gaming chair, you need to know why your chair is dirty to begin with. Like our parents used to say, “prevention is better than cure”. So if you can prevent your chair from getting too dirty, you’ll end up cleaning it less frequently.

These are some of the biggest factors that cause your mesh or fabric chair to become dirty:

  1. Eating and/or Drinking – It goes without saying that mesh, fabric, and faux leather chairs can get dirty when you eat or drink while gaming. You’ll end up spilling your drink or dropping crumbs that get embedded into the mesh or fabric. When spilled drink or sauce becomes unattended, it turns into stubborn stains that may be difficult to remove later on. Water stains are also quite common problems because they’ll cause spot discolorations or inadvertently damage the surface.
  2. Dust From Outside – Dust particles can come inside your house or room from different sources. Your centralized air-conditioning units might be reeling in dust from outdoors, or you could tracking dust from your clothes when you do go outside. Your gaming chair will never be dust-free unless you just cover it with cling wrap.
  3. Bodily Fluids – Or sweat stains to put it simply. Sweat stains against a white fabric or mesh can become easy to spot because they’ll turn yellow as time goes on. You won’t really notice you have sweat stains on there until they turn a shade of yellow.

Faux leather chair, be it PVC leather or PU Leather, are actually more resistant to dirt because they don’t allow dirt or dust particles to get embedded into the material. But it doesn’t mean that your chairs won’t get dirty too.

Much like fabric and mesh chairs, PVC leather and PU leather get dirty the same way. The only difference here is that the latter’s cleaning process is easier and the materials are easy to maintain. You may not get the usual stubborn stains as you would with mesh and fabric chairs. The cleaning process for leather chairs is a lot easier too.

How to Maintain Your Gaming Chairs And Keep Them As Clean As Possible

After all that’s said and done, you now want to make sure that your chair is as clean as possible for a long time. If you really want to keep it clean, here are some tips:

Remove Dust Particles Once A Week

To keep your chair regularly clean from surface dust, you need to vacuum or dust at least once a week. Dust particles often work themselves into the fabric or material when left unattended. They turn into tough stains that end up becoming too difficult to clean.

Direct Sunlight Is Your Worst Enemy

Exposing your gaming chair to direct sunlight for prolonged periods of time can damage the upholstery. Discoloration might occur for fabric and mesh chairs, while surface cracks might appear for faux leather materials.

If your workstation is near a window with direct sunlight running through it, use a curtain to reduce sunlight from coming into the room.

Read Your Manufacturer’s Cleaning Instructions

If you bought your gaming chair as brand new, then you’ll need to read through the manufacturer’s cleaning instructions. The cleaning directions provided will help you clean the chair as intended rather than relying on a random cleaning solution.

Not all gaming chairs are made equal, so be sure to browse through it first. Certain fabrics might be sensitive to mild detergent, or a commercial cleaning solution, so you might end up damaging the chair. Some brands might also have their own water based cleaner or stain remover, like Secret Lab. A few drops of that cleaner might do wonders for a Secret Lab chair, but might not be the case for another named brand.

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