Easy-Going Recliner Slipcover Honest Review: What I Would Change

I spilled coffee on the arm of my lift recliner in March, about three weeks after the chair came into the house, and I did what I always do when something goes wrong. I got on Amazon before the stain set and ordered a cover. That cover is the Easy-Going stretch recliner slipcover, and eight months later I have a different opinion of it than I did the week it arrived.

This is not the review I would have written in April. In April I would have told you it was fine, it went on the chair, it looked neat, and then I would have moved on with my day. What I know now is that the Easy-Going cover comes in four pieces that do not all fit the same way, that it is not water resistant no matter how much it looks like upholstery, and that the piece for the footrest has never sat right on my chair. I still use it every day. I would still buy it again. But if you are going to spend your own money on one, you should hear the parts the first line of the listing does not tell you.

What Nobody Tells You Before You Buy

The first thing is that this is not one cover. It is a set. You get a piece for the seat and the center back, a piece for each armrest, and a piece for the footrest. The pieces come labeled, which sounds like a small kindness until you are standing there with four lengths of stretchy fabric in your hands trying to work out which arm is which. Mine were tagged, the two arm pieces marked ARM and the center back piece marked as well, and I still laid all four out on the floor in the order I thought I would need them.

That matters because three of the pieces fit the way you would hope and the fourth does not. On my chair the footrest piece goes on loose. It is not falling off. It simply is not snug the way the seat is. It shifts when the footrest goes up and down, and I find myself tugging it back into place more often than I would like. I have re-seated it. I have tried putting it on before the other pieces and after them. It is loose, and that is the honest answer.

The second thing is the water resistance, which is to say there is none. The listing says so plainly if you read the specifications. Not water resistant. I did not read the specifications. I read the word cover and the star rating and I thought, good, the coffee will not get through. It will get through. The fabric is 80 percent polyester and 20 percent spandex, it is soft, and it stretches, and it will stop a crumb. A mug of coffee goes straight through it into the chair underneath. If a spill is the reason you are shopping, this is a cover for keeping a chair clean in the ordinary way, not for stopping a spill that has already happened. I keep a folded towel on the arm now when I have coffee in the chair, and that is not a sentence I expected to write about a chair cover.

The third thing is the measurement. The listing gives a sitting area range of 23 to 34 inches, and that is a wide spread. Stretch fabric forgives a lot. It does not forgive everything, and a chair at the top of that range is going to be a snugger fight than a chair at the bottom. Measure the seat, write the number down, and compare it before you order. I measured mine with Walt's tape measure on the kitchen table, and I am glad I did, because I would have guessed, and I would have guessed wrong.

How I've Used It

The cover went on in March and it has been on the chair ever since, on the same lift recliner I sit in every day by the front window. It took Karen and me about twenty minutes to fit it the first time. She is my daughter, she lives twenty minutes away in Belmont, and she has more patience for this kind of thing than I do. Getting the seat and back piece on is easier with two people, because somebody has to hold the fabric while somebody else works the chair flat so you can reach the back corners.

The elastic at the edges does most of the work. You stretch, you tuck, you work the fabric down into the corners, and it holds itself. The arm pieces are the easiest of the four. You drape, you tuck, you smooth, and you are done. The whole set weighs 2.2 pounds, so it is not heavy, and there is none of the wrestling you get with a fitted sheet.

The one thing I would tell anybody with a lift chair, and this is not on the listing, is to check the mechanism before you settle back into it. The cover is fabric and the chair moves. Before I trusted it, I ran the chair all the way up and all the way back with the cover on while I stood beside it and watched the seams. Nothing caught. Nothing pulled. The hand remote cord comes out of the side pocket, and I made sure the fabric was clear of it, because the last thing anybody needs is stretch fabric wrapping itself around a cord while the chair is moving. It has been fine for eight months, but I check it, and I would check yours. If you have had a surgery or a fall, or you are covering a lift chair for somebody else, ask your doctor or a physical or occupational therapist about anything that changes how the chair fits before you use it. I am not a nurse and I am not going to tell you what to do. I asked Dr. Patel about the chair itself before I bought it, and I would ask about anything that changes how it sits under me.

Eight Months In: What Held Up and What Did Not

The seat and back piece has held up better than I expected. It has been washed, on gentle, roughly every three weeks since March, which puts me at about a dozen washes. It has not pilled, it has not gone thin, and it has not lost its stretch. I hang it to dry over the back of a kitchen chair because I do not want it in the dryer, and in all that time I have not had a single seam give.

The anti slip backing does something, but it does not do everything. The seat piece stays where I put it. The arm pieces stay where I put them until I lean hard on the arm getting up, and then the front edge walks back half an inch and I tug it forward again. That is the whole complaint, and it is a small one. If you are the sort of person who cannot stand to straighten a cover once a day, you will be straightening this once a day.

Nothing has torn. Nothing has stained permanently. The coffee that started all this came out of the chair fabric with a damp cloth and never set, because I got to it fast. That is the joke of it. I bought the cover after the spill it would not have prevented.

The fabric is softer than I expected. I thought it would feel closer to a sheet, and it feels more like a heavy t-shirt. It is quiet when you shift in it, it does not crackle, and it does not run hot the way some synthetic covers do in the summer. In August, in Gaston County, that matters more than I can tell you.

The Footrest Piece Is the Weak Link

I want to be fair to this cover, and being fair means saying that Easy-Going got three of the four pieces right. The seat and back piece fits snug. The arm pieces fit snug. The footrest piece does not, and it is the piece that gets the most wear in a lift chair, because every time you stand up and every time you lie back, the footrest moves.

Mine is loose enough that it wrinkles when the footrest comes up. It has never come off, and I want to be clear about that, because I do not want to scare anybody away from a cover that has kept my chair clean for eight months. It is a nuisance. It is the kind of nuisance you notice for the first two weeks, then stop noticing, then notice again when a visitor is sitting in the chair and you see it from across the room.

If I could change one thing about how this is made, it would be that piece. A little more elastic in the edges, or a shorter cut, and this would be a different review. As it is, I have learned to put it on last and to pull it tight from the front corners first, and that is as good as it gets on my chair.

Washing It Takes an Afternoon

You can machine wash it. The listing says so, and I have done it, roughly once every three weeks since March. Gentle cycle, cold water, and I do not put it in the dryer. I hang it.

Hanging it is where the afternoon goes. The fabric is thick enough to hold water, and on a Carolina summer day on the back porch it is dry in a few hours. In January it is not. I have learned to wash it in the morning on a day I am going to be home, and to have the pieces draped over the backs of kitchen chairs by nine so they can go back on before the evening news.

The one thing I would not do is wash it the day before company comes. It has never shrunk and it has never lost its shape, but it does come out of the wash looking tired until it is fully dry and back on the chair, and a half dry cover on a recliner looks exactly like what it is.

I bought the cover after the spill it would not have prevented. Eight months later it is still on the chair, and I still keep a folded towel on the arm when I have coffee.

What I Would Change

If Easy-Going asked me, and they have not, here is my list. Make the footrest piece tighter. Say the words not water resistant in the first paragraph instead of down in the specifications, because the woman buying this is buying it because something spilled. Print the measuring instructions bigger, or drop a paper tape in the box, because a 23 to 34 inch range is wide enough that people will guess and then be unhappy with what arrives.

And label the pieces more plainly. The labels are there and I am grateful for them, but ARM on two pieces that look identical, plus a center back tag on a piece that could be mistaken for an arm, is a puzzle at seven in the evening with four pieces of fabric on the floor. A small diagram on the packing slip would have saved me ten minutes and one phone call to my daughter.

What I would not change is the fabric. The 80 percent polyester and 20 percent spandex blend is the right call. It stretches, it holds, it washes, and it feels better than it needs to for the job it does.

Who This Is For

This is for the person who already has the chair and wants to keep the fabric out of the ordinary line of fire. Crumbs, dust, a visitor with a slice of cake, a husband who puts his boots up. If your chair is good and you want it to stay good, this does that.

It is also for the person who would like the chair to read a little less like a piece of equipment in the living room. I am not going to pretend that is not part of it. My chair sits by the front window, and people come to the front door and look right at it. With the cover on it reads as a chair with a throw over it, and I like that better than the alternative.

And it is for somebody who can spare twenty minutes on the first fitting and five minutes every few weeks straightening it. If that sounds like too much, it probably is.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your main worry is liquid. If you eat soup in the chair, if there is a cup of coffee on the arm every afternoon, if anyone in the house sets a glass down on a cushion, this is not the cover for that. It is not water resistant. Waterproof recliner covers exist, and I have seen them in listings and on a friend's chair at church, but I have never owned one and I am not going to pretend I can tell you how they compare.

Skip it if you are not going to measure. The 23 to 34 inch range is real, and a chair at the top of it will fight you. Skip it if you want a cover that turns a worn chair into a new one, because it will not. It stretches over what is there, and what is there shows through.

And skip it if you have a lift chair and you are not willing to run the mechanism once with the cover on and watch the seams. I did, and mine has been fine for eight months, but that is my chair and not yours. If standing up out of the chair is the hard part of your day, ask your doctor or a physical or occupational therapist before you change anything about how that chair fits you.