Every seat in a bar fails its own way
A swivel stool, a wall banquette and a curved booth are three different jobs. This is what each one actually needs, and what it costs to put right.
Type decides the price, not square footage
Operators ask what reupholstery costs per seat, and the honest answer is that it depends almost entirely on what kind of seat it is. A flat stool pad and a channelled booth back take the same material and five times the labour.
Below is each type we see behind a New Jersey bar, what goes wrong with it, and what it takes to recover. The specification side — rub counts, flame codes, foam density — is on its own page.
Bar seating reupholstery is also the one job where doing the whole room at once genuinely costs less than doing it twice. The visit is the expensive part, not the seat.
The fastest seat to recover
Off at the plate
Four screws, pad off, new cover on, back on the same base. The quickest seat in the room.
All front edge
No back to share the load, so the front edge goes first. Edge roll almost always wants rebuilding.
Check while it is off
The one moment anyone can see the swivel and the footring fixings. Retightened as standard.
Edge before middle
The roll collapses long before the cushion does. A new cover over a flat edge bags out in a season.
Twelve stool pads is one night. They are the seat most worth doing as a run rather than one at a time.
Templated in place or it will not sit right
A built-in run is not a repeating shape. Walls are out of true, corners are site-made, and the seat height drifts along the length. A pattern cut anywhere but in your room shows it.
Straight runs go a wall at a time. Thirty feet is two nights, and the room keeps trading because we work the section you are not using.
Where the difficulty is
Simplest of the three
Seat and back as separate panels. Joins fall at the frame, so nothing shows.
Material has to ease
A curve pulls the cover two ways. Cut wrong it ripples, and no amount of stretching fixes it.
Each flute pulled separately
Slowest work in a bar. Looks worst when it is tired and best when it is right.
Buttons at depth
Pull depth has to match the original or the pattern reads as wrong across the run.
Chairs that move around the room
Loose lounge chairs and low club seating take different damage from fixed seating: arms scuff on tables, backs rub against walls, and they get dragged rather than lifted.
They are also the easiest to do in rotation. We take a few at a time, so the room never looks short of seats and nothing is roped off.
Most bar seating reupholstery in New Jersey gets booked in the quiet months — January through March, and again in September — when a room can lose two nights without losing a weekend.
What each type runs
Cheapest per seat and quickest. Twelve in a night. Worth doing the whole run at once.
Priced by the foot. A wall is a night, thirty feet is two.
Two to three times a straight run for the same length, because the labour is in the shaping.
Done in rotation, a few at a time, so the room stays full.
Photograph one seat of each type and count them. That is enough to price a whole room, and it is the difference between a quote and a guess.
Across New Jersey, after close
Hoboken and Jersey City through to Asbury Park and Red Bank, and the whole corridor between.
Before you book
Why do stools cost less per seat than booths?
A stool pad is a flat panel off a plate. A channelled booth back is pulled flute by flute. Same material, several times the labour.
Can you do part of a room?
Yes, and most rooms are done that way — a wall or a run at a time, so the bar keeps trading.
Will new seats match the old ones?
Sampled against what is in the room. If the gap is too wide to close, we say so and price the rest rather than leave you with two tones.
Do you template on site?
For anything built in, always. A banquette pattern cut off site will not sit right on a site-made frame.
What about the foam?
Replaced where it has gone, contract density, with the edge roll rebuilt. Covered on the specification page.
Could a repair do instead?
If the damage is local, yes — see repair. If the colour has drifted, restoration.
We will price the room by seat
Stools, banquette feet, booths and loose chairs priced separately, so you can do the expensive part later if you want to.
Or email office@leatherrestorepro.com