fabric selection

It’s the fabric that (more than anything else) that is first noticed when your eyes see a piece of furniture. It’s the fabric(s) that showcase color, texture, design, style, and character in your room.

A world of choice---be it cloth, leather, faux, or vinyl...from all colors and textures to styles---you simply select from major designers and manufacturers lines that include Kravet, Waverly, Schumacher, Robert Allen, Williamsburg, and on and on. Maybe, just maybe, “simply” is simply understating the fabric selection process. You see, there is a combination of considerations that come into play:

Do you want cloth, leather, faux, or vinyl?
You’ll need to consider wearability, comfort, color, cleanability, cost, and style.
You’ll need to schedule an appropriate amount of time to evaluate fabrics.
In most cases, you’ll need see the fabric in your room setting before selection.

Wearability

In this world of ours, it seems that in order to gain something, you have to give up something. This is also true of fabrics. If you want wearability, then you give up some brightness of color. The fabrics that take on colors and hold them are the ones which have open pores and accept the color more readily. Open pores (or open weaves) are more affected by rubbing or abrasion, causing these fabrics to wear out sooner. Choosing a heavier, thicker, denser fabric will increase the wearability. Some of the fabrics that fall into the less wearable class are polished cottons, acetate, and rayon. These fabrics you’ll find in draperies due to their ability to hold colors and resist sunlight. Nylons, polyester, and olefins---man made fibers---offer more wearability. Remember, most fabrics have a combination of various fibers, you should note the percentages in the composition of a fabric under consideration.

Comfort

This is basically the softness, warmth, sun heat, and breathability (ease of air passing through it) of a fabric. With vinyl and leather, it is best to install air-a-tors to let the air in and out, especially on a seat cushion, or you’ll feel like you’re sitting on an inner tube.

Color

Coordinating colors involves the matching and blending of the color(s) that you are selecting for the piece of custom upholstered furniture with the colors existing in the room’s surrounding furniture, floors, window treatments, and wall cover.

Railroad and Repeat

These two words can make a difference in your whole fabric selection process.

Railroad means that the pattern or nap of the fabric goes from side to side on the roll (horizontal) rather than up the roll (vertical). All fabric with a pattern or nap is either railroaded or not railroaded.

The larger the pattern---the larger the repeat, thus, more fabric is needed to match pattern!

At the risk of confusing the issue, a fabric’s pattern “repeat” becomes a consideration when the size of the piece of furniture involved the custom upholstery process is not large enough to fully display the pattern. For example, the size of the fabric’s pattern is 27” x 27” but the seat and in-back of the chair to be upholstered is only 20” x 20” --- you would not be able to see the whole pattern on the seat or the in-back.

Cleanability

All fabric should have its own cleanability code attached to the fabric. It’s self-explanatory.

Cost and Style

These are simple! You’re paying the bill (you know what you can afford) and you know what you like. Remember, “Thee, who pays the piper... names the tune”.