Aesthetic, comfort and resistance.
When you choose to refurbish your sofa, these textile characteristics should be considered, as your ideal sofa must be beautiful, thus comfortable and functional.
A quality couch is an investment you will enjoy for many years, therefore, should you decide to upholster a family sofa or buy a new one, remember it will be part of your life for a long time, don’t compromise with quality and take all the time you require to make your choice.
First of all aesthetic quality. Choose a model or a textile for upholstery that moves you every time you enter the room. Aesthetically, in terms of pattern, texture and colour, the upholstery will have to perfectly match with the interior or being the focus. The choice of the textile will be essential, as it will be the secret heart for a totally comfortable sofa. A couch in a natural fibre velvet, more than any other textile, will donate a unique physical comfort at any time. Think for a moment to kid-mohair velvet, a sublime quality wool, indestructible, breathable, perfect for any season.
Also the dimensions and the positioning of the sofa in the room will play a key role in the choice of the textile for upholstery. A suggestion: use the cotton velvet with contrasting piping for chairs, armchairs or a small couch and more daring patterns for sofas of large dimensions.
When choosing, along with the aesthetic aspect, consider the resistance to the use, it is a fundamental characteristic. Each textile, has its own characteristics like thickness, compressibility, bending and extensibility features, dimensional stability and surface characteristics.
Caressing the textile surface consider the sense of smoothness or roughness, hardness or softness, stiffness or elasticity. These are the feelings that determine if a textile will be comfortable or not for the person using it.
Each textile can look light or thick, soft, smooth, crisp, rugged, rough, furry, or soft in variable ways, according to personal preferences. Choose the one you feel will be more comfortable for your times at home.
Along with these characteristics of the haptic you will discover different resistance features too. Depending on the kind of use you will make of your sofa, for an optimal variable time between five to eight years, a textile will have a good level of resistance to the use when having at least 20.000 Martindale cycles.
Martindale is a technical test used to analyse the textile resistance evaluating the damage resistance, pilling, change in colour and the weight loss.
The test is carried out contemporary on at least 3 samples of material which, in contact with an abrazing material, have to undergo setup rubbing cycles on a determined pressure: based on the result of this textile samples the number of cycles will be marked i.e. (Martindale 2.500 cycles).
The rubbing test ends when the first 2 yarns of the textile weave break, whilst the pilling test ends when the first fuzz balls appear on the textile surface.
The abrazing tests are carried out by electro-mechanical devices, whilst the surface checking are conducted by expert personnel.
Based on the positioning of the sofa in your room, when choosing do not forget to consider colour resistance to the light too
Talking about colour resistance we consider the change or loss of the original colour of a textile sample with respect to different alteration elements to which it could undergo. Colour solidity is particularly important as to define the quality of a textile.
Last but not least, when choosing the textile for your sofa, where you will spend so many moment of your life, do not forget to verify its safety. The textile must not be produced with formaldehyde or heavy metals, these being considered carcinogenic substances for the human being. They are still widely used in the textile industries as in this way you can save costs in the production phase, but ignoring human health.
All l’Opificio jacquard fabrics and velvets, designed and produced by us, correspond to the best design and quality criteria and you can discover them visiting
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