Custom banquette cushions in a Manhattan window bay, laid for dinner

There is no old cushion to copy. Only the opening it sat in.

Custom banquette cushionsCustom banquette cushions are the one seat we cannot copy from a seat. The bench is joinery, fixed to the building, so the only thing to work from is the bay it leaves behind. We template it, cover it and fit it where it stands.

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Why it is a different job

The bench is carpentry. Only the top is ours.

A dining chair arrives with its old seat still on it, so the new one is traced from the old one. Fixed seating gives you nothing to trace.

The carcass was built on site by a joiner working to a wall that was already there. Its bays are whatever that wall allowed, and the drawings, if they still exist, were drawn before the plaster went on. Skirting, a radiator housing or a column that had to be boxed in will each have taken a bite out of one bay and left the rest alone.

So we measure the void, not the furniture. That is why a run of six bays the plan calls identical comes back as six different templates, and why custom banquette cushions are quoted per bay rather than per linear foot.

It also changes what you are buying. A loose cushion can be swapped later by anyone. A cushion cut to one opening fits that opening and no other, so the template is worth keeping. We file ours, which is what makes a later replacement a single visit instead of two.

Leather banquette run built into the wall of a restaurant dining room — Built into the wall, so it was never going to come out to be measured.

The survey

A tape measure gives you a number. A template gives you the shape.

One visit, in closed hours. Paper goes down in every bay, the returns and the out-of-square get traced, and the bay is numbered so it cannot be fitted to its neighbour by mistake. Custom banquette cushions start on that paper, not on a price list.

Upholsterer laying template paper into a banquette bay to record its shape — Paper first. Cloth is cut from the paper, never from the tape.

Upholsterer tracing the return of a banquette bay onto template paper — The returns and the corners are where a bay stops being rectangular.

Restaurant floor plan with one bay of a banquette run marked — Each bay is numbered on the plan and the paper carries the same number.

Shapes

Six openings, six different templates.

The shape of the opening decides how many panels custom banquette cushions are made from, and a curve is never made from one.

Single banquette bay upholstered in tan leather against a panelled wall — One bay on its own

Straight run of tan leather banquette bays in a restaurant dining room — A straight run

Curved tan leather booth bay wrapped around a round restaurant table — A curve, cut in segments

Channel tufted corner banquette meeting at an inside angle — An inside corner

Green banquette run built into a slatted timber wall in an NYC restaurant — A wall the joiner built first

Freestanding curved banquette in green velvet on a plain background — A curve with no wall behind it

Where they sit

Eight rooms where the seat was built before the cushion.

Custom banquette cushions work the same way in a window bay at home as they do on a restaurant floor. Only the wear rate changes, and with it the cover.

Tan leather restaurant banquette laid for service in the evening — Restaurants

Bar room with a banquette along the wall and stools at the counter — Bars

Hotel lobby banquette seating in dark leather — Hotels

Nightclub banquette seating lit in purple — Nightclubs

Coworking booth banquette in green and tan upholstery — Coworking floors

Private dining room with a curved banquette around a round table — Private dining

Rooftop terrace banquette seating at sunset — Terraces and roofs

Long white window seat cushion in a bright residential room — Window bays at home

The work

Five moves, once the template is right.

Covers for custom banquette cushions are cut and made up off site. Only the stripping and the fitting happen in your room, which is why the floor closes for hours rather than days.

Upholsterer pulling staples from a banquette base with pincers — 01Strip the bay back to the carcass

Green banquette with its deck, back panel and top roll called out — 02Cut every panel off the template

Upholsterer stapling a tan leather cover onto a banquette back — 03Pull the cover and staple it home

Finished tan leather banquette back with even vertical flutes — 04Set the flutes so they line up

Restaurant banquette laid up and back in service after recovering — 05Hand it back laid for service

What we look for

Six things that decide whether a bay gets a cover or a cushion.

If the fault stops at the cover, the core stays. Once it has reached the foam or the deck, custom banquette cushions are rebuilt underneath rather than recovered.

Split seam on a brown leather banquette seat with foam showing through — A seam that has opened to the foam

Deep creasing across the front of a brown leather banquette seat — Creasing that no longer lifts

Fine crazing across the surface of a brown leather banquette back — Crazing across the finish

Tear in brown leather beside a deep buttoned banquette back — A tear beside a button

Clean cut through the leather of a banquette seat — A cut straight through

Stressed seam along the edge of a dark commercial vinyl booth seat — Vinyl pulling at the stitch line

Covers

What the cover has to survive.

Custom banquette cushions are cleaned more often than any other seat in the building, and slid across far more times a night than they are sat down on.

Commercial vinyl swatch in a dark booth colour — Commercial vinylRated for spills and bleach. The default in a room that turns tables.

Green channelled leather banquette catching the light — Full-grain leatherTakes the sheen a room reads as expensive, and shows every knock.

Leather swatch held against an existing banquette to check the colour — A matched hideHeld against the bay in the room's own light before anything is cut.

Suede banquette dining seat in a warm neutral — SuedeWarm underhand, unforgiving of water. Private rooms, not service aisles.

Navy upholstered banquettes in a restaurant dining room — Upholstery fabricThe widest palette, and the one that dates fastest if you pick a trend.

Embossed grain repeat across a faux leather banquette panel — Faux leatherReads as hide from the aisle. Check the grain repeat on a long run.

At home

A window bay is a banquette the builder called joinery.

On one Upper East Side job a radiator housing ran under half the sill, so the bay was forty millimetres shallower at one end. Nobody had noticed until the old pad came out. A bay gets traced end to end for exactly that reason, never averaged.

Pale linen window seat cushion in a bright bay above built-in drawers — Linen over a deep sill, with the drawer fronts left clear.

Quilted window seat cushion finished and sitting flush in its bay — A single panel, stepped at the return so it sits flush.

Tan leather window seat cushion running the full length of a city window — Leather on a narrow sill, for a bay that takes afternoon sun.

Before and after

Same carcass. New top.

Nothing structural moved in any of these. The joinery stayed where the builder left it, and everything softer than the carcass came off and went back new, custom banquette cushions included.

Long tan leather banquette run before and after recovering — A long run in tan leather

Green leather wall banquette run before and after recovering — A wall run in green, end to end

Corner booth in worn red leather before recovering and cream after — A corner booth, red before and cream after

Curved booth bay before and after recovering in brown leather — A curved bay, put back as one line

Custom banquette cushions across a run, creased before and crisp after recovering — Seat cushions replaced across a run. The carcass, the back and the base never moved.

Questions

What people ask before booking a survey.

Do you make custom banquette cushions for a bench you did not build?

That is most of the work. We template the bay as the joiner left it, so the cushion fits the opening rather than a drawing of it.

Can you match the bays we are not touching?

We hold the candidate against the existing run in the room's own light before cutting. A match that only works under the workshop lamp is not a match, because two hides that agree under one light can part under another.

Does the bench have to come out?

No. Custom banquette cushions are templated, stripped and fitted where the bench stands, usually overnight.

How long does a run take?

Templating is one visit. The covers are cut and made up off site, then fitted in closed hours so the room opens on the same schedule.

Is foam replaced every time?

Only where it has gone. Custom banquette cushions keep their core when a bay still holds its shape, and take a new cover instead. New fill for commercial seating falls under the federal flammability rules for upholstered furniture.

Do you work outside Manhattan?

Yes, across the five boroughs, Long Island and northern New Jersey.

Tan leather banquette run in a restaurant dining room in the evening

Start with a template

Send a photo of the bay and the length of the run.

That is enough for a number on custom banquette cushions across New York City, Long Island and New Jersey. The survey is booked only once you want to go ahead, and the quote is free.

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