This Design Pro Wants You to Update That Old Chair Instead of Tossing It (She’ll Teach You Exactly How!)

Get to know Apartment Therapy’s 2025 Design Changemakers, the talented risk-takers, disruptors, and doers leading by example and pushing their industries forward. This content is presented by Benjamin Moore; it was created independently by our editorial team.

Hepzabeth Taylor firmly believes that fabric belongs everywhere in your home, especially on your walls. “Fabric walling has a rich, immersive quality that instantly elevates a space,” Taylor says. In 2019, Taylor’s affinity for covered walls (and ceilings) led to her create the Textile Wall Company, a design service that stitches walls and ceilings in yards and yards (and yards) of fabric. 

While fabric-covered rooms are undoubtedly impressive, Taylor, who has a background in furniture conservation and restoration, also wanted to share her furniture-based upholstery skills. She began building a cloth empire with the 2023 launch of The Upholstery Studio, an online database of video courses that allow Taylor to share her decades of knowledge with the masses. “Upholstery can feel intimidating at first, but with the right guidance, it’s deeply satisfying,” Taylor says.

She wants to “demystify the process” and give people confidence to dive into upholstery projects, whether it’s working on a family heirloom or a flea market find. “It’s about storytelling through fabric, breathing new life into old pieces, and reconnecting with the kind of making that feels grounding, empowering, and creatively fulfilling,” she explains. 

Taylor got her guidance at a young age in the U.K. when she watched her mom “work magic on her sewing machine,” Taylor explains. “She made everything — from my clothes to our curtains and cushions. Our home was full of fabric, threads, pins, and pattern paper. It wasn’t unusual to find a spool of thread tucked behind the sofa or scraps of fabric in the kitchen drawer.” Before long, Taylor was stitching up little sewing projects of her own. 

As a teen, she worked in an antiques shop, where she polished dressers, rearranged shelves filled with porcelain, and most notably, saw how new upholstery could completely transform antique furniture. “I became completely captivated by the idea that something old and tired could be brought back to life with care and craftsmanship,” Taylor says.

While living in Australia in her 20s, Taylor rehabbed old pieces with new fabric, usually “plain, neutral linen,” which she says the antiques dealers believed would help sell their offerings more easily than using “bold patterns or colorful fabrics.” 

Taylor found herself longing for projects with more color and pattern — and she had already witnessed the transformative power of upholstery — so she started putting vibrant fabrics where few people dared: on walls. “It’s not just decorative, it’s practical, too. It softens acoustics, adds depth, and creates a sense of warmth and comfort that paint or wallpaper simply can’t replicate.” Finding this niche made her valuable in her field, and because of that, she was able to share her design knowledge via The Upholstery Studio, which she launched in 2023.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but those two early influences — my mum’s sewing and that little antiques shop — laid the foundation for everything I do now,” she says. “Looking back, it just makes sense that I’d build a career around textiles and interiors.”

With the Upholstery Studio, which has 500 active members and six tutorials covering everything from dining room seat cushions to piping (the wavy headboard class is the most popular), Taylor is able to share detailed how-tos and live Q&As that help empower everyday people to become skilled DIYers.

“When people come to The Upholstery Studio, they often think they’re simply learning a practical skill — but what I’ve come to realize is that they’re also reconnecting with creativity, problem-solving, and patience,” Taylor says. “I’ve seen people start a project feeling unsure or intimidated, and by the end, they’ve not only built a headboard from scratch or transformed a tired old chair, but something within them has shifted, too. There’s confidence, pride, and that brilliant sense of ‘I did that,’” she explains.

That’s not to say there won’t be a few oopsies along the way, and Taylor says that wrinkles and uneven corners are all part of the learning process. (Which reminds her of the time she didn’t order enough fabric for a project where she’d be matching the pattern, and while she was mortified, she learned to always measure twice — and to overestimate the amount of fabric needed for any given project.)

The Upholstery Studio also takes her back to her roots at the antiques shop, where she learned that teaching yourself a skill can have a ripple effect on the way you shop and design your space. “Having a chair professionally reupholstered can be costly, and sadly, we live in a throwaway society where it’s often cheaper and more convenient to buy something new — usually mass-produced and made with cheap labor,” Taylor says. “But when you learn to do it yourself, you don’t just save money — you gain the satisfaction of preserving something with history and character.”