And do you dare? A bold uni colour or perhaps velvet for once? Last spring we chose a corner sofa in this olive green velvet for our showroom in Zaandam. Velvet is really back and has long since ceased to be limited to classic sofas. Velvet, also called velour, is a pile fabric that makes the fabric feel wonderfully soft and creates a light/dark effect, also called shading or nap. If you don't like this nap and you tend to iron it away again and again, there are also velvet fabric qualities with a less high pile. An additional advantage of a velvet sofa: if you have a cat (or cat), the pile structure is less likely to invite scratching.
How do you prevent your furniture fabrics from discolouring?
Is there a furniture fabric that does not discolour in sunlight? We were surprised by the effect of this combination: a modern 4-seater sofa with a cotton fabric cover. Here, the fabric really gives the sofa its own unique look. The advantage of cotton as a furniture fabric is that it breathes. Natural materials take on the temperature of the skin, which always feels pleasant. Cotton also gives a beautiful matte natural look. However, you should always pay attention to the lightfastness of cotton. Most materials eventually discolour if you put them in full sunlight. (Just like us.) But natural materials and dark colours do discolour slightly faster than light colours and fabrics with a synthetic fibre such as polyester. That is why we opted for a mix of 85% cotton and 15% polyester. The cotton in our collection has a lightfastness of at least 5, which is a common value on a scale of 1 to 8 among furniture fabrics for home, garden and kitchen use. And fortunately, the colour choice was light here, which makes the chance of discolouration somewhat smaller.
Enjoy a beautiful sofa for a long time? Polyester is the way to go!
Polyester as a sofa cover seems like a disadvantage, but is that really the case? If you prefer to take as little risk as possible, choose polyester as a furniture fabric for your sofa. Nowadays, a synthetic furniture fabric no longer has to feel hard and synthetic and the appearance of the fabrics is also becoming more beautiful. An advantage of polyester as a furniture fabric for your sofa is that it is more stain-resistant and discolours less quickly in sunlight. They are also very strong fabrics with a high Martindale. Martindale is the value that is assigned to the wear resistance of a furniture fabric. As a rule, a minimum value of 25,000 applies to seating furniture that is used in the private environment. From 35,000 you can hardly expect any complaints. We therefore select our fabrics on a Martindale of at least 35,000. With the exception of 1 very beautiful luxury linen upholstery fabric, this has a Martindale of 25,000, but here too it applies that a natural fabric is slightly more vulnerable.
How do you get rid of lint and pilling on your couch?
How do I get rid of the fluff on my couch? Of course, what is not pretty are the balls or fluff that often appear on the edges of your couch, pilling. This has nothing to do with a cheap or expensive fabric. On the contrary, a real wool fabric on your couch will fluff sooner than a polyester upholstery. Just like your sweater. You can easily remove the fluff with a lint remover. It helps enormously if you keep a close eye on this from the start. With cotton and velvet qualities, you will have significantly less to no trouble with this pilling.
