Product Comments Archives

21 January 20186 April 2026

How to Clean Mohair Velvet

Mohair, Cotton and Silk Velvet Textured Upholstery Patterned

For a complete guide to fabric care symbols and upholstery cleaning codes including what W, S, WS, and X mean for velvet upholstery, see: Fabric Care Symbols and Cleaning Codes: A Guide for Interior Designers and Specifiers.

How to Maintain and Clean Mohair Velvets

Mohair velvet can be difficult to clean. If you are in any doubt, contact a professional cleaner. The following information is provided as a guide only and is not a formal recommendation by KOTHEA.

As with many fabrics, prevention is the best cure. A regularly cleaned velvet will last longer. Routine care should consist of brushing with a firm clothes brush and regular vacuuming. Expert professional cleaning approximately every five years is advisable as part of a longer-term maintenance regime.

Removing Stains

Serious stains should always be removed by a professional. Never attempt to treat them yourself.

Minor stains can sometimes be removed, but always test any cleaning method on a small inconspicuous area first.

For fresh stains that have not dried, use an absorbent, dampened, lint-free cloth. Do not use a coloured cloth as the dye may transfer into the velvet. If water alone does not work, try a diluted upholstery shampoo applied carefully following the manufacturer’s instructions. Rub very gently, finishing in the direction of the pile. Remove all chemical residue afterwards.

Do not use the fabric again until it is thoroughly dry.

Dealing with Wear and Tear

A regular cleaning regime is essential for velvets. Without it, the fabric can show premature wear, most visibly on regularly used areas of sofas and chairs. Frequent movement on velvet pile pushes the pile in different directions, which can eventually cause matting. When pile lies in different directions the shade of the fabric can appear to change. This is a natural property of the fabric and is made worse by excess heat or humidity.

Mohair velvets generally take and hold colour well and typically achieve high Martindale rub test scores, making them among the more durable natural-fibre velvets available for upholstery.

On clean fabric only, the following may help restore the pile: apply a clean, lightly dampened cloth and leave for ten hours, then remove and allow the fabric to dry naturally for ten hours in a well-ventilated room. Use only pure or distilled water. Never wet or soak the cloth or the fabric.

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1 December 2015

Usage of Linen Velvet

Upholstery Linen Chair Bibendum Eileen Gray

KOTHEA was asked what linen velvet fabric could be used for.

A: General uses. Upholstery, curtains, cushions. The 100% linen velvet we have has a Martindale / Rub Test of 20,000 so it is certainly suitbale for appropriate upholstery uses. A linen velvet offers a relatively unusual yet natural fibre for a velvet.

20 November 2015

Faux Leather Upholstery

Faux (or fake) Leather offers a great alterantive to leather. With Martindale rubs of over 100,000 this is a very safe choice for high use contract areas. It’s usually made of a pure cotton basecloth with a poly-cotton visible coating. There are many other animal skins that are mimiced in the same way and in many cases the finishes are convincing.

But why not just use leather?

Much leather production has now moved away from the West to areas with less stringent environmental laws and lower wage rates. This is where the problem lies.

Chromium based compounds are used in the tanning and curing process of real leather. They are thought to be carcinogenic as, in some European tanning factories, cancer rates were found to be up to 50% higher in workers than in the population as a whole. Furthermore there were higher incidences of Leukemia in children living in areas near the tanneries. Environmental problems are exacerbated by the siting of factories next to rivers; the significant amounts of discharge that are produced are fed into the water courses and then dispersed over wide areas. In more lowly regulated economies it is not unreasonable to believe that the situation is probably worse.

Moving towards a better leather requires that chromium use is stopped completely and that the water used in production is cleaned and re-used in the factory. Any tanins and dyes uses would preferably be plant based.

Food for thought: If you wear leather clothing on sweaty skin then chromium residues in the leather can rub off and enter the skin.

19 November 201518 January 2026

Faux Leather on doors and walls

KOTHEA had two recent projects where we had to adhere Faux Leather vertically. This poses a more serious challenge than paper-based wall coverings due to both the weight of the fabric (nearly 1kg per linear metre) and the wear and tear when adhered to a door. Both installations were more involved than domestic ones as we had to consider firstly the use on a yacht in a marine environment and secondly the high levels of usage of a hotel.

So the adhesive needs to be strong.

A further set of issues to overcome are related to how the fabric might react to any chemicals in the adhesive. In both instances our fabric had a 100% cotton back coat with a vinyl mix visible layer. Superfically a conclusion could be drawn that most adhesives would be OK with the surfaces they are fastening to in these instances ie a natural wooden door and inert stone wall combined with the natural cotton back cloth. However the adhesive will almost certainly penetrate the back cloth. Becuase of this the use of a solvent based adhesive, such as Asceton, is most definately not recommended.

So the adhesive needs to be strong and water based.

After performing suitability tests in these instances we chose to use Mapei’s Adheselix VS45 . VS45 is an acrylic adhesive in water dispersion and has been used extensively by Mapei’s customers for PVC/foam wallcoverings and rubber flooring. An alternative of Adesilex G19 was also suggested for areas with more moisture but that was not necessary in these cases.

17 November 2015

Double Width Sheers

When considering sheers for window treatments it is often worth bearing in mind that there are many double-wdth sheers available from many suppliers including, of course, ourselves. Double width sheers are worth special consideration as they offer:

1. Cheaper make up costs as there can be less work involved in using a wider fabric;
2. The ability to improve the overall aesthetic look – as there are fewer seams; and
3. The ability to be railroaded (ie made up with the pattern going the ‘other’ or the ‘wrong’ way. A width of 300cm or thereabouts is often sufficient for many drops (lengths) and this can eliminate the need for any seams.

Some of the best ideas are often the simplest.

16 November 2015

Bleached Fabric & Environmental Impact

Most of us are familiar with household (chlorine-based) bleach, which is sodium hypochlorite. It is a very powerful bleaching agent and, like similar agents used in the industrial bleaching of fabrics, it has by-products that include; dioxins, furans and organochlorides.

An alternative to a chlorine based bleach is Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2). This has medical uses and domestic uses such as for bleaching hair.

Hydrogen peroxide occurs naturally by the action of sunlight on water and is simply water plus an extra oxygen molecule (2 lots of H20 plus one lot of 02 equals 2 lots of H2o2 for all you chemists). Hydrogen peroxide is quite reactive and so easily gives up some of its oxygen to revert back to water. This act of giving up oxygen to something else, like fabric, causes the fabric or impurities in it to be oxidised. The oxidised parts of the fabric are chemically changed and lose their colour. They remain there but their colour is changed. That’s what makes it a bleach and so the end products are just the oxidised fabric and water.

Natural linen has a light brown or beige colour. To go lighter than this it has to be either bleached, or bleached and dyed.

If your clients are environmentally conscious and concerned about the environmental impact of the products they buy from you, it would be prudent to ensure that your linen is hydrogen peroxide bleached rather than chlorine bleached.

15 November 201514 April 2026

Mohair Velvet for Upholstery

Black mohair velvet upholstery on a regal chair

Mohair velvet is a fabric much sought after by interior designers. It is sold in a wide range of qualities and is sometimes used as a generic term for velvets when, in fact, there are very many differing and sometimes superior compositions available than just those made with ‘mohair’.

Velvet is a type of tufted fabric woven with a warp pile. It has a short dense pile of 3mm or less (‘plush’ has a pile longer than 3mm) and a distinctive feel. During production wires lift the yarn creating small loops which are either cut or left depending on the desired finish. Velvets tend to take colour very well and also tend to be hard-wearing with a high degree of suitability for varied uses; they were typically hard to clean but that problem is mostly solved with modern dry-cleaning.

What’s in a velvet?

Kashmir was probably the birth-place of velvet in the early 1300s but by the 16th Century Bruges had become the leading source of what at the time was a definitive luxury item. Luxury velvets are still made in Europe as well as in Asia.

The original velvets were typically silk velvet. With the passing of time and increasing technical sophistication it has become easily possible to make velvets from many natural and synthetic yarns. At KOTHEA we have velvets at the top end of the quality range made from fine yarns including Linen Velvet, Cashmere-Silk Velvet, Linen Velvet, Cotton Velvet, Wool Velvet and of course Mohair Velvet. Other velvets available in the market have compositions that include polyester, nylon, viscose, acetate or mixtures. Sometimes small amounts of lycra are included to give the fabric stretch.

14 November 2015

Curtain Fabric Static

Another grey mohair velvet, luscious upholstery

If you are unfortunate enough to have created beautiful curtains that are plagued by static problems then please read on.

Fortunately static is rarely noticed when curtains are hung, this is partly because of the chosen combination of materials and partly also because the weight of the material overcomes the weak power of static electricity. However if you do have this rare problem then you have already invested a lot of time, effort and money into buying curtain material and having them made up and hung. Do you have to start again?

Before answering that dreaded question it is important to understand what causes the problem in the first place. There is little point in re-making the curtains if the same problem is going to happen again.

Static is a natural phenomena. The main way in which static is created is when two materials are rubbed together causing an excess electrical charge on their surfaces. It is not, however, caused by the friction itself and it is not caused because a material is synthetic/man-made.

All materials differ in their propensity to cause static. It takes the properties of TWO materials to cause static; one must be good at giving up ‘electrons’ and the other good at receiving ‘electrons’. The better that each of the materials are at giving/receiving ‘electrons’ then the more static there will be. For any scientists reading, you might remember that this is measured by The Triboelectric Series.

On the Triboelectric Series; hair, wool, glass, nylon and fur are good at giving up electrons. Whereas silk, paper and cotton are at the other end of the scale and are bad at giving up electrons. Conversely; wood, metals, polyester and styrene are bad at attracting electrons whereas at the other end of this side of the scale polyurethane, polyethylene, vinyl/PVC are good at attracting electrons.

Thus a combination of PVC and hair would produce the most static whereas cotton and wood would produce the least. If you think about combing your hair then this should ring true.

Polyester is very similar to gold, platinum, brass, silver, nickel and copper in its static generating properties. Whereas, cotton is one of the lowest materials on the scale.

So the first lesson, bearing in mind the above, is that the choice of materials ie the curtain and the lining are critical. Also any surface that the curtain comes into contact with is important. So the second lesson is to consider the location.

Let’s turn now to how the curtain is made up. An experienced, professional curtain maker should know how to avoid the static problem.

Taking an example of a mixed composition fabric. Let’s say 40% cotton, 40% viscose and 20% polyester. And let’s also say that the material is loosely woven and has movement. Looking at such a fabric an experienced curtain maker would say that the fabric ‘needed taming’ and that a light cotton inter liner should be used. In addition to that the following details should be followed:

• The interlining should be locked in with 3 inch stitches. This should not be knotted;
• At the leading edge the interlining should be serged and locked in;
• The hem should be herring bone stitched. The stitches should not be too large and should not catch the face fabric; and
• Because of the nature of the fabric, the hem should slightly break on the floor.

These are not generic solutions to all curtain static problem. But they should be considered by the curtain maker.

So we have seen that: the choice of material; how the design works when hung; and how the curtain is made up, all have impacts on the creation or dissipation of static.

13 November 2015

Upholstery Linen

Until recently the finest linen was made exclusively in Western Europe. Whilst many of those producers still exist, much production has been shifted to the Far East. At KOTHEA, we endeavour to use European linen partly for sentimental reasons as we love the fabrics our mills have continued to deliver to us but also becuase the enviornmental impact of them is good and the quality fantastic.

Many of our natural linens are hydrogen peroxide bleached which is less environmentally damaging than the traditional use of the stronger chlorine-based bleach. Then, when colour is required, we typically only use dyes from natural materials.

Linen

Elegant, beautiful, durable, this luxury fabric is the strongest of the vegetable fibres and has 2 to 3 times the strength of cotton. It is smooth, making the finished fabric lint free and ensures that it only gets softer and finer the more it is washed. Linen comes from flax, a bast fibre taken from the stalk of the plant. The lustre is from the natural wax content, with it’s colour ranging from creamy white to light tan. Linen does wrinkle but also presses easily when damp. Linen, like cotton, can also be boiled without damaging the fibre.

The decrease in use of linen may be attributed to the industrialisation of cotton production (a cheaper fibre), the increasing quality of synthetic fibers, and a decreasing appreciation of buyers for very high quality yarn and fabric. Very little top quality linen is produced now, and most is used in low volume applications like hand weaving, as an art material, or table and bed linens.

Although the actual growing of linen is free of the extensive spraying and use of pesticides used on cotton, it is the production process that can be environmentally damaging – the extensive water consumption and the chemicals and mordants used in the dying process. Our Eco linen is of the highest grade, is hand loomed in Latvia and is undyed. It is bleached using low impact hydrogen peroxide rather than chlorine. See also Dye and Bleach, above, for further details.

12 November 2015

Can cotton ever be environmentally friendly and at what cost?

Your beautiful cotton shirt or luxurious cotton curtains may hide an environmental time bomb.

Vast amounts of pesticides are used to grow cotton. By weight, it has had more pesticides used in its production than just about any other crop on the planet. To make matters worse, many of the chemicals used in production, such as cyanide, are cancer causing. A sobering fact is that cotton represents approximately 3% of the world’s crop production yet uses 25% of all pesticides.

Truly organic cotton is free from all chemical treatments. It further benefits from having no further treatment after harvesting. Usually there are no further bleaching processes or additional insect repellents (for example to counter moths). Where bleach has to be used, hydrogen peroxide (whilst sounding awful), is actually the most environmentally friendly bleaching option.

Maybe you don’t feel so good about your curtains now. Sorry! But seriously how much more would you be willing to pay in the future for organic cotton?