A guide to choosing fabrics When you start decorating your home, or feel as though you want to revamp it a bit, one thing people often overlook concentrating on are the types of materials and fabrics they use on upholstered furniture, or especially your blinds. Fabrics are often crucial to an items longevity and durability, so we’ve put together some top tips to help you figure out what fabric you should use within your home and why. For homes with a lot of natural daylight / sunlight, so that could be anyone with a skylight, conservatory or a south facing home, think carefully about your fabrics as certain blends are prone to fading much quicker than others. As appealing as it sounds to have something that has a high cotton or linen thread count, you are safer to opt for fabrics with a more artificial composition. Something like Polyester, Rayon or Viscose will keep its colour much longer. If you have your heart set on something more natural, then we highly recommend purchasing an ASC or SPC (Advanced Solar Coating / Solar Protective Coating) fabric available in roller, vertical and pleated blinds, to protect the fabrics from sun damage. This also has the additional benefit of helping maintain your rooms natural temperature, by keeping it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. For those of you with pets, opt for a fabric with a tight weave – this makes it a lot harder for the cat or dog to get its claws stuck under and therefore more difficult for the animal to wreck. If you want to remove animal fur from your furniture, put on a rubber glove and rub it along the surface – this will quickly and effectively pick up and loose hairs! If you are someone who’s more into leather than fabric, opt for a leather that’s been aniline dyed – these types of leathers are dyed all the way through which means if they are scratched no marks will be left over. Cheaper, less well dyed fabrics may leave a white mark if the animal scratches it. Lastly, one thing to make note of comes in the early stages of choosing your fabric is where the fabric is going to be situated. If your fabric is going to be a window blind in a damp condition; the bathroom, then we need to look at fabrics with waterproof properties. If the fabric is going to be in a bedroom then we suggest a blackout lining on curtains or blind to help aid a good nights sleep! Comments are closed.
