How many leather hides do I need to buy?

When you are getting a lounge suite covered in leather, you need to figure out how many hides you will need. Leather comes per hide, not on a roll from your local fabric store. That means it takes a little brain power to determine the number of hides you need to buy. In general, it's assumed that each hide will give you approximately 4.75 square metres of leather, but how does that translate to how many I need for my lounge suite?

Here are some basics so you can get a better idea of what you might need, but check with your upholsterer to confirm you will have enough for your project before buying. It is likely however, that your upholsterer has their own source on getting hides. So check that the deal you're getting is in fact better than what your upholsterer would be able to get within the trade. 

To work out how many hides you will need to buy we need to do a little maths (sorry!) First you need to know these two factors:

1. A cow hide = approx 4.75 square metres of leather
2. You need to order 1.75 square metres of leather for every square metre of fabric

Now we know the area required, lets get some more information.

Lets pretend you are getting a couch and a love seat upholstered, we need to know how many metres of fabric is needed to cover them:

1. Couch = Approx 16.45 metres of fabric needed (width approx 150cm)
2. Loveseat = Approx 14.75 metres of fabric needed (width approx 150cm)

So total of fabric needed is 31.25 metres of fabric is needed to upholster both pieces.

Now we need to determine the area of leather required to cover the couch and the love seat:

31.25 metres (of fabric) x 1.75 sq. m (of leather) = 54.75 square metres of leather 

(Lets call is 55 sq. metres)

Now lets find out the number of hides:

Again, each hide is about 4.75 sq. metres of leather, so the final formula you need is this:

55 sq. metres of leather (needed) / 4.75 (per hide) = approx 12 hides are required

Additionally you would want to add 10-20% extra to accommodate any flaws or unusable sections of the hide.

That brings you closer to 14.5 hides so in other words you will need to round up to 15 hides, if you really want to be safe, aim for 16 hides.

So does that make sense to you, or have I confused you completely? See, if you want to become a upholsterer, it would pay for you to pay attention in maths class! If you need help with that formula give us a call 0800 698 746