Tag: upholstry fabric

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Contract Upholstery Fabric – How to Specify It

For a comprehensive guide to specifying fabric for hotel and hospitality projects, including Martindale thresholds by room type, BS 7176 fire certification, cleaning regime compatibility, and dye lot strategy, see: How to Specify Fabric for Hotel and Hospitality Projects.

A quick guide to specifying contract upholstery fabrics. The main areas to consider are as follows.

1. Determine Use

Is it panelling or seating? For seating you will need to consider flammability (cigarette, match, and Crib 5) and abrasion (Martindale).

2. Fabric Composition

The composition of the fabric including the yarn and weave will affect long-term wear, appearance, and technical performance. Natural fabrics such as wool can be more expensive but generally offer good handle and technical characteristics including natural flame retardancy. Man-made fabrics are usually easier to maintain but require careful selection to achieve the right aesthetic.

3. Flammability

The standard for contract seating acceptable throughout the EU is EN 1021 Parts 1 and 2 (cigarette and match). Higher-level standards in the UK are BS 5852 Crib 5 and BS 7176. The standard for vertical surface fabrics is BS 476 Part 7. For a full explanation see our complete guide to BS 5852 Crib 5.

4. Abrasion

Check the Martindale rub count for the fabric. For contract seating in hotels, restaurants, and offices, a minimum of 40,000 Martindale rubs is the standard threshold.

5. Environmental Considerations

Natural fibres such as wool generally have better environmental credentials than synthetic alternatives. Nylon in particular has a high environmental impact.

6. Care and Maintenance

Contract fabrics typically deteriorate from dirt accumulation rather than abrasion. Follow the manufacturer’s cleaning instructions. Remove stains promptly and vacuum regularly.

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Black Velvet – Even Better Italian Silk Velvet In Black

Black Velvet – only to be enjoyed by those who appreciate that black is the new black! KOTHEA have a range of velvets with shades of black colourways in most of those velvet collections.

“Black Diamond” is the colourway name for the Italian Silk Velvet (100% Silk Pile) with the code 777-108-900.

You can get black silk velvet samples here from KOTHEA if you are a trade professional. Just click the link.

KOTHEA velvets are the best in the market. We only sell top market fabrics, mostly to top European Interior Designers and Architects. Here are some more bits of technical information on our black Italian Silk velvet fabric:

Width: 140cm

Composition: 100% Silk Pile

No repeat, plain.

Abrasion: Martindale 20,000.

Available from stock, normal delivery within 5 days.

Minimum Order length: 2m

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Moleskin Upholstery Fabric

Moleskin Upholstery FabricMoleskin Fabric is an unusual fabric for upholstery, usually associated with clothing. KOTHEA moleskin is a premium moleskin specifically designed for upholstery with Martindale Rubs between 20,000 and 30,000. Moleskin is often a blend of cotton and linen; however KOTHEA‘s 100% cotton moleskin is extremely tightly woven ensuring that a luxurious look and feel is guaranteed. The overall look is similar to suede yet more exclusive and durable.

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The Cigarette & Match Tests BS 5852

For comprehensive guides to the main UK fire standards for interior fabrics, see: BS 5852 Crib 5: A Complete Guide for Interior Designers and Specifiers and FR Treatment, BS 7176, and the Crib 5 Test.

No fabric company can self-certify the fire retardancy of their fabrics. Certification can only be issued by a UKAS-accredited test laboratory.

The following is a summary of fire retardancy requirements by application. For detailed advice on current legislative requirements, consult a specialist fire testing laboratory or your local fire officer.

Domestic

Curtains. No fire treatment is required for domestic curtains.

Upholstery. The fabric must pass the match test (BS 5852 Source 1). The designer must first confirm the fabric passes the cigarette test (BS 5852 Source 0). The cigarette test meets the equivalent European standard BS EN 1021-1. The match test meets BS EN 1021-2. Fabrics containing at least 75% natural fibre content do not usually require treating for the cigarette test, but a Schedule 3 fire-retardant interliner must be used.

Contract

Curtains. The fabric must be treated to BS 5867 Part 2 Type B. Some fabrics meet this standard inherently; most require treatment. Some fabrics cannot be treated to this standard.

Upholstery. The fabric must be treated to BS 5852 Source 5 (Crib 5). This typically involves the fabric being back-coated, and most fabrics can be treated in this way. BS 7176 covers BS 5852 and additionally includes the cigarette and match tests and a water-soak requirement.

Other Applications

Headboards, bed covers, wall coverings, yacht interiors, and aviation interiors may have differing requirements. Confirm the applicable standard with the relevant authority before specifying.

There is broad equivalence between British and European standards. Standards for the United States are different and should be confirmed separately for any project with US compliance requirements.

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Mohair Velvet, Silk Velvet: How to upholster using it

Silk Velvet Upholstery Fabric TextileMohair Velvet and Silk Velvet buyers consider this: You have just invested a considerable amount of money in a high quality silk velvet or mohair velvet. Are you really considering upholstering with it yourself. Use an experienced upholsterer who, to be brutally honest, should not need the instructions that follow.

Some velvets are woven with a nap others are not. It is not a problem either way. If there is a nap you need to know which way it goes as that affects the process of upholstering. When you run your hand down the mohair velvet or silk velvet the smoothed direction indicates the direction of the nap. Remember this, it is important.

I’m assuming that you have already checked that the fabric is not damaged and that each piece is from the same dye lot.

The nap should be upholstered downwards for:

– the back;

– the seat; and

– side surfaces.

The nap should be upholstered from the outside inwards for:

– arm rests.

How do you flip your cushions? Top to bottom or left to right?

Most people flip from top to bottom. It is therefore standard upholstering practice to upholster the front and the back the opposite way. IE when they are flipped over the nap is the same.

You should use a layer of wadding between the foam and the fabric. The wadding can be either cotton or synthetic it does not really matter but check with any fire rating requirements. Again check that you are using the right kind of foam but HR foam or cold foam are both fine.

However if the pile is vertical then we advise the additional use of a cotton slip-cover.

Going back to the foam for a minute we advise that you use white wadding. In certain circumstances it is possible that grey wadding will ‘bleed’ causing marks on your beautiful Mohair Velvet. For example this may be caused from moisture used in the cleaning process.

Always use wadding on the arm rests as a protective layer to help eliminate ‘sharp’ edges. Using wadding on arm rests will thus reduce wear and tear considerably.

For the piping never use synthetic piping cord, always use cotton piping cord. As with the arm rests this will reduce wear and tear by eliminating the ‘sharper edges’.

Again to reduce wear and tear also use the length of the fabric to make the piping. this will look better as well.

Happy Upholstering

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KOTHEA 2010 Fabric Collections

Finally! Our summer collections have been decided and we will begin to introduce the new designs and colourways throughout the remainder of this year. We have been inundated with new work in the first part of this year causing our blog posts to be curtailed and our ‘spring’ collection to nearly be an autumn/fall collection. Not that we really do seasonal collections in any case.

I will return later in another post to KOTHEA’s awesome sales figures for the financial year just finished. Most surprising, especially considering we are in the midst of a recession. We had our best ever year and by quite a large margin.

We expect some coverage of the new collections in World of Interiors and Elle decoration but, again, more on that at another time.

Where can you see our collections? Well, we are as elusive as ever but we are starting to digitize some images to our flickr feed (click the images on the right or here). The flickr update is ongoing, there is information on flickr now but some of the images are not final and some images do not have full associated descriptions / product details but we are woking on that this week. Our usual clients will receive the new collections in due course starting in late summer; if you need them more urgently for pressing projects of course we will be happy to oblige. Please get in contact in the usual way.

Not all are in production yet but most sampling is available now.

As a very broad summary we have:

1. New colours of several existing ranges including faux leather;

2. More velvets including patterned and crush;

3. Striped, double-width linens;

4. Upholstery weight linen; and

5. A few more interesting one-off designs in limited colourways like the one heading up this blog post.

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What is the Martindale Shade Change?

There is no Martindale Shade Change test as such. If you have been referred to the Martindale rub test, the person referring you is asking about how durable your chosen fabric is to abrasion. The Martindale rub test result is particularly useful in indicating whether a fabric is suitable for its intended use.

Shade change is something different. Martindale tests are routinely undertaken on fabrics in the UK. In other countries different tests are used, such as the Wyzenbeek in the United States. As part of the Martindale test procedure it is becoming more common in the UK for a shade change assessment to also be undertaken.

When a fabric has been rubbed 3,000 times the Martindale test is paused and the fabric is examined to see how the shade has changed. It is then given a mark out of 5, with 5 being the best result indicating the least change.

A natural property of fabrics is that they show change with use. The shade change assessment determines how much of that change will be visible after a reasonable amount of use, with 3,000 rubs being the point at which this is assessed. It does not mean the fabric will wear out after 3,000 rubs. It has nothing to do with wearing out. If your fabric has a Martindale result of 50,000 rubs, the structure of the fabric starts to break down after 50,000 rubs. The shade change result at 3,000 rubs is a separate measure of visual change, not durability.

If your client is asking about fading caused by sunlight rather than shade change caused by wear, that is a different property measured by a different test. For a full explanation of how light fastness works and what grades to specify for different room orientations, see our guide to light fastness and the Blue Wool Scale.

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Getting a better Martindale abrasion test result for interiors fabric

Rumours abound that different testing houses give different Martindale abrasion test results for the same fabrics. Is there any truth to that?

Probably not.

Sometimes the tests can be carried out differently and so the results are different. There is a British Standard for abrasion testing which specifies how the test is done, if it is done in a different way then that may affect the result.

For example if we ‘know’ that a fabric is going to achieve about 35,000 Martindale ‘rubs’ then we would ask the testing company to test to 40,000 or if we were uncertain of the likely result we would ask them to test to end-point.

It is usual practice for the fabric to be rubbed in increments of 3,000 or so at a time. Clearly it is easier if a machine is left to run for 30,000 rather than 3,000 and then reset 10 times. Also the ‘correct’ (latter) way will give an accurate result of exactly when the fabric wears out.

I’m not sure why this is done not having read the British Standard myself in detail; maybe the fabric tension on the machine is meant to be checked every 3,000 rubs?

Anyway, if the test is not done properly then a LOWER result will be obtained.

So, providing a reputable testing house that is properly accredited has undertaken the test then it is safe to assume that the result is accurate. Of course the fabric piece that you buy may vary ever so slightly and this might cause minor variations. But that is the nature of some fabrics. A fault in the fabric may also cause it to wear out much quicker than expected but that fault should normally have been spotted by your upholsterer before they used it.

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What is UK FR treatment BS7176 BS5852 Crib Test?

For a complete guide to specifying fabric for hotel and hospitality projects, including BS 7176 fire certification, cleaning regime compatibility, and Martindale thresholds by room type, see: How to Specify Fabric for Hotel and Hospitality Projects.

For a comprehensive guide to BS 5852 Crib 5, including what the test is, the three-stage procedure, the difference between inherent and topical certification, and how to specify correctly, see: BS 5852 Crib 5: A Complete Guide for Interior Designers and Specifiers.

Summary: for contract upholstery in the UK, the full test is a water-soak plus Crib 5 plus cigarette test plus match test. Read on for the detail on how to get the treatment done correctly.

For contract upholstery fabric in the UK your fabric normally needs to be treated to pass BS 5852 Source 5 (Crib 5). When getting a fabric treated, ask for it to be treated to that standard. As a designer that is all you should normally have to do.

Treatment must be undertaken at a UKAS-accredited company. There are various ways of treating fabrics to meet the standard. You do not need to know them all; that is the job of the treatment house. Tell them what standard the fabric needs to achieve, that you will be getting it tested independently afterwards (that encourages them to do it properly), and that the fabric will be subject to a water-soak test.

The reason for specifying the water-soak is that some older treatment methods are permissible within the standard but can fail the water-soak stage. These treatments can contain phosphorous-based chemicals that wash out. If a fabric is not inherently fire retardant, part of the test involves soaking it in water, which can remove the treatment and cause the test to fail.

Some treatment houses do not have the machinery required for the more advanced treatment methods and simply immerse fabric in a bath of fire-retardant chemicals. Specifying that you will be testing afterwards, including the water-soak, motivates the treatment house to use the correct process.

As part of the treatment process, some companies will carry out an indicative test and issue a certificate of treatment. This means the fabric should pass the Crib 5 test. However the crib test itself has not been carried out at this stage. Check with your client and fire officer whether an indicative certificate is acceptable, or whether they require the full independent Crib 5 test to be completed, which takes longer and costs more.

Fire regulation must be taken seriously. The repercussions of non-compliance are significant.

As a minimum, when commissioning FR treatment:

  • Use a UKAS-accredited treatment company.
  • Specify: treat this fabric to pass BS 5852 Source 5 (Crib 5).
  • Specify: it will be water-soaked and tested independently afterwards.
  • Ask for an indicative test at the end of treatment and a certificate of treatment.

BS 7176 and Hazard Categories

Most UK fabric companies and designers work to Crib 5. There is a higher level of testing and certification called BS 7176, which includes the Crib 5 test, the cigarette and match tests, and the water-soak, and additionally requires the test to document the specific end-use environment and the exact foam to be used in the installation. This means the test mimics your specific project’s conditions as closely as possible.

When specifying a BS 7176 test you need to state how the fabric will be used: in a hotel, a restaurant, a hospital, a prison, an offshore installation, and so on. These end-use environments determine the hazard category of the test.

The treatment applied to achieve BS 7176 Medium Hazard is the same as for Crib 5. The difference lies in the documentation and the scope of the test. Specifying BS 7176 Medium Hazard is advisable for complex or sensitive contract projects, and for furniture manufacturers who wish to label their products as suitable for specific commercial environments.

For a full explanation of BS 7176 hazard categories and when to use them, see our complete guide to BS 5852 Crib 5.

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