New for Spring 2015, striking and shimmering design beautifully upholstered on an occasional chair.
Shimmering Upholstery
Patterned Textured Upholstery
Our Spring Collection of upholstery fabrics and double width sheers includes this striking geometric design.
Faux Leather Upholstery Fabrics
KOTHEA are one of the UK’s leading Faux Leather suppliers to the Interior Design and Architectural sector. Our products in this sphere have high performance, commercial and residential characteristics – fantastic durability and adherence to appropriate fire retardancy standards.
We have several faux leather collections – they are aimed specifically for upholstery but are often also used on walls, doors, sometimes for curtains and cocktail bar fronts and stools.
Most of the wide range of colours we stock are available in several different finishes. The finishes range from a ‘flat’ vinyl to a heavy, but naturally, textured leather finish. In between these extremes, there are leather textures with differing degrees of depths of textures.
The ‘feel’ of the collections vary. Some are very like leather to the touch, whilst others are more vinyl. Typically more vinyl-type finishes have highly superior cleaning and light fastness properties.
Please note that these faux leathers are specifically targetted towards interiors. They are not thin, low-grade fashion faux leather.
We also have several ranges of faux animal skins, mimicking skins such as crocodile and ostrich. These are niche products and are only available by the roll.
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What is Mohair Velvet?
Mohair Velvet is a fabric ideally suited for upholstery.
The Mohair wool from which it is made is 100% natural and is inherently Fire Retardant, usually to contract (hotel) standards. Mohair, too, is typically hard-wearing. Ideal for a busy home; a home cinema; a cinema!; a restaurant; a hotel and so the list goes on.
It is not necessary to have MOHAIR. Mohair wool is from a goat. Other wools from Alpaca or sheep have similar properties. It’s just that Mohair Velvet is the most widely known for upholstery.
Cotton, linen and silk are all-natural fibres that are made into velvets. Man-made fibres like trevira, viscose and nylon can also be made into velvets either on their own or mixed with natural fibres.
We offer free mohair velvet samples/cuttings to TRADE interior designers.
Sofa and couch – faux leather or real leather
Chic, shabby chic or a bit of a mess?
Leather upholstery is limited by the size of the hide. Probably not that much of an issue on smaller sofas.
Faux leather can have very high abrasion resistance and both can be treated for fire resistance.
Care and maintenance is easier with faux leather. Repairs and colour matching are easier with faux leather, which is important if you under-order/under-specify or just need to buy some more if the project scope increases.
Fire Treating Faux Leather and Vinyls For Contract Upholstery Crib 5
Faux Leather and, indeed, vinyls in general have widely varying compositions. So it is very difficult to generalise about FR treatment.
However, as interior designers know, they are great for contract projects because of the excellent abrasion properties and the excellent ease of ongoing care and maintenance. IE they maintain their appearance relatively easily for extended periods.
Contract projects of course pose flammability requirements for the interior designer to determine and specify.
Typically CRIB5 is required for contract upholstery.
Some faux leathers come pre-treated; perhaps containing silicon/Teflon or other substances within the vinyl that limits or excludes the spread of flame required in a crib 5 test.
However some faux leathers require treating. That’s to be expected to a degree as faux leather is a relatively versatile fabric and can be used for a variety of end uses – but hence the required FR treatment will vary.
We recently treated some black faux leather to pass FR for contract curtains. In that case it was possible to treat the back of the fabric (it had a thin absorbent layer on the back) and that was sufficient to stop the spread of flame.
Another brown faux leather that we make has a speciality foam backing, slightly thicker than normal. Whilst this will take the same kind of chemical as the one for curtains the CRIB5 test has a more tricky flame to deal with. Also of consideration is the adhesive required to fix the backing and vinyl together. This adhesive may not be fire resistant again adding to the difficulty of treatment.
The thicker the backer the more luxurious the feel, perhaps. But the more difficult the treatment can be. Some sort of liner / interliner to the rear may well work to stop the flame spreading in a FR test. However, the thicker the foam backing the further away that interliner might be.
We have some specialist backing layers that themselves once set alight release gases (carbon dioxide) that reduce the spread of flame elsewhere. These backing layers do not noticeably add to the thickness of the faux leather.
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Silk Velvet – What makes a great upholstery velvet
Silk Velvet really is one of the great upholstery velvets. It looks great, it feels great and it can be up to the job if your upholstery velvet is chosen wisely.
If your last and only experience of a velvet was sitting on one in the cinema then you really haven’t lived!
Firstly let’s look at silk velvet’s suitability for upholstery. It can have a Martindale Rub Test result of over 20,000 – so it CAN be readily suitable for many upholstery uses.
Composition. Just because it is sold as 100% silk can be misleading and not necessarily relevant. Is this 90% silk velvet better than that 100% silk velvet? You just can’t answer that by simply looking at the composition.
A silk velvet that is sold as being 100% silk may in fact be a 100% silk velvet pile and 100% cotton backcloth. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. If it is the look and feel of the silk that you are looking for then maybe it’s best to just consider the pile (assuming the backcloth is up to the job of course). One of our fine silk velvets has a 100% pile and then a backcloth of silk and cotton – with the cotton being added for strength and the overall silk content being 90%. Compare this to our Italian Silk & Cashmere Velvet which has a 70% silk + 30% cashmere pile.
Next look at the silkiness or the shininess. If you are looking for a silk velvet you will usually want a shine.
Consider too the length of the pile. Again, there is nothing inherently good or bad about a long or short pile. A shorter pile may be more rigid and upright and that could be a characteristic that you are looking for. Alternatively, a longer pile will probably lay better in one direction – and you may well want that characteristic.
The weight of the fabric in grams per metre is often used as a measure of quality. That is not always true and could, for example, easily be distorted by a heavy and poor quality backcloth.
My personal preference would be to get my hand on a sample; feel it and look at it. What I look for and prefer is a slightly more rigid and consistent pile with a very dense weave. I would look carefully at the country of manufacture. I prefer an Italian velvet (mainly because it sounds better!) but if not Italian then I would certainly only consider a velvet produced in mainland western Europe. But don’t copy me, have the confidence to choose what you like – you are going to have to live with it. I would now choose my upholsterer carefully; many years ago a velvet-covered chair came back for me from a local upholsterer and the pile was not running in a consistent direction…it didn’t look great (read ‘awful’). So don’t, like me, assume that all upholsters know what they are doing with velvets, they patently don’t all know. I would then read our guide to upholstering with velvet – a designer’s worksheet and armed with a bit of knowledge quiz your upholsterer carefully.
What is faux leather? When should an interior designer use it?
Faux leather looks like leather. It is a fabric made out of materials other than leather. Faux is the French for ‘fake’. So it is fake leather. It is cheaper than natural leather and much easier to work with in many cases. As well as a fabric for interiors it is used in many industries: it could be in your car or could make the case covering your iPAD. In the interior design world you would use it for: upholstery and wall-covering but also to cover, doors, table-tops, bar stools, bars, etc.
Types of Faux Leather
There are two main chemical types of faux leather: polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyurethane (PU). Both types are used in making clothing, upholstery, and product covers; typically KOTHEA use PVC For our faux leathers. We are able to obtain fine faux leathers with amazing properties as a fabric including extremely high Martindale Rub test scores in excess of 200,000 and extremely accurate animal hide pattern copies.
Compared to Real Leather
Sometimes you can’t tell the difference unless you know what to look for. Most obviously natural leather will not have any kind of repeatable pattern. Faux leather will have a degree of ‘repeat’ but might be sufficiently subtle that you do not notice it. Natural leather has visible and irregular pores and rough edges.
Natural leather tends to have a smoother feel whereas some faux leather may well feel like plastic BUT other faux leathers will feel very similar to the natural leather. The ‘smell’ may be chemically but this could be either the chemicals that have been used to treat the natural leather or the chemicals in the faux leather. A VERY chemically smell that sticks to your hand is probably a faux leather – although most faux leathers will not have this property.
Pros and Cons
Faux leather can generally be made to have very good consistency of colour across batches and in theory can be made to any required colour (in sufficient quantity). Similarly texture and pattern can be varied and/or reproduced much more easily than with a natural product.
Care and maintenance of faux leather is greatly superior to natural leather which requires conditioning. Faux leather can be bought by the metre whereas natural leather must necessarily be bought by ‘the hide’ and hence has join, length and width constraints not necessarily found in the faux alternative. Faux leather generally has superior light fastness and durability.
The animal lover will appreciate that faux leather does not require animals to die. But then again many animals die each year to support the meat industry and leather is an abundant by-product that, if used, you might argue avoids waste. KOTHEA do not sell natural leather.
When should I specify FAUX LEATHER for interior design?
There is certainly a kudos surrounding natural leather. It IS viewed a s a more desirable product. However I’m really not sure why; especially when you look at it logically.
Faux leather is much easier to work with; it is much better suited for any kind of long term interior design use – looking at durability and care & maintenance; it can look and feel the same as natural leather. It is made of chemicals but chemicals (often environmentally damaging ones) are used in the natural leather treatment process.
Whilst I might buy natural leather shoes I would only specify faux leather in a contract interior design situation and would probably also specify faux leather in my house with the possible exception of a statement sofa.
Related articles
- Faux leather Upholstery (kothea.com)
- More Black Faux Leather Upholstery (kothea.com)
- Fine Faux Leather Upholstery – New Contract Fabrics With High Abrasion Martindale (kothea.com)
More Black Faux Leather Upholstery
Faux Leather is great for upholstery. Here is a time lapse video of the full process if you want to know how it is done. We would be happy to point you to a local upholsterer but please remember that we only sell the faux leather upholstery fabric. If you would like samples please drop us an email request <here> (trade only). We have several collections of faux leather in most colourways including base colours (black, brown, green, blue, red, yellow, gold) muted neutrals and metallic finishes.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/E333E2nRke4]
Faux leather Upholstery
Recently we have had some detailed enquiries about how to upholster with the fine upholstery faux leather that we sell. KOTHEA are certainly NOT expert upholsterers and those questions should be aimed at your professional upholsterer.
Having said that here is a video (below) by Christopher Nejman showing some techniques for faux leather upholstery.
For more information about our faux leather products and colours click <here> or use the links on the right.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcQfbojcY0w]