How to Easily Refluff a Pouf or Ottoman in Minutes
March 31, 2026
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How to refill a smashed ottoman or pouf at home.
We LOVE these fabric ottomans I purchased for our living room years ago:
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These neutral poufs look great and at around 17 inches tall, they fit perfectly under our large DIY coffee table:
I like that we can pull them out as foot rests or extra seating, but they are stored out of the way. You can see with time, those poufs start to shrink a bit. Like anything that's filled with foam, they start to lose their fullness after a lot of use. The foam gets crushed, so a full ottoman or pouf will start to shrink.
Our ottomans have a nice cover with a zipper at the bottom. There's an insert with the foam inside that I had to open up:
A seam ripper is super helpful for this part! It makes quick work of opening this up.
I've used a couple of filler options over the years -- this bead bag refill is tiny foam beans that go a long way. I had plenty left for future refills:
I've also used this shredded foam to refluff ottomans, and ended up preferring that option.
We used a cup to scoop the little beads into the insert...slowly. This stuff will go all over if you're not careful. 😜
Once I had them as full as possible, I hand sewed the inserts closed. That's it!
Just look at the difference!
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| Find our gorgeous family room rug here! |
SO much better! These decorative poufs are usually not cheap -- refluffing will give them a much longer life.
It took me about an hour to fill them back up. Now they look like they did when we got them!:
This fix works on any ottoman, cushion or pouf filled with foam pellets. And of course, bean bags!
I've found that our ottomans need a fluff every three years or so, and then they look brand new again.
Do you have a sad, flat ottoman that needs refilled?
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Where did you get the cute little remote holder?
ReplyDeleteI got it at Target but it was years ago. They don't seem to carry it anymore. :(
DeleteIf you have a ottoman with more traditional filling that is starting to look a little un-poufy give it to your kid to kick around. We had a woven leather ottoman that was filled with something more than the foam pellets. When it started to look a little squished I'd have my boy kick and flip it all over the house. He loved this usually forbidden activity and it fluffed that ottoman right back up!
ReplyDeleteA tip for re-filling the bean bags and poufs--use a flexible cutting mat or poster board to create a large funnel. Makes it a smidge less messy and a whole lot faster to fill!
Great funnel tip!!
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