Home Furnishing Fabrics Key Terms

Understand home furnishing fabrics and how they are made
By Nikki Wheeler When in the business of decorating homes or providing products for home decorating, it is essential to understand home furnishing fabrics key terms. Fabrics are any soft material made by weaving, knitting, crocheting or pressing fibers together.

Home furnishing fabrics are used to cover furniture, windows, pillows and hung on walls or placed on tables as decorative textiles. Being able to use home furnishing fabrics key terms expertly will help in making the right purchasing choices for your business, as well as informing customer purchases in the following ways:

1. Choosing the right home fabrics will create the look that is most cohesive with the design of the entire room.

2. Understanding the home textile qualities will ensure that the customer is provided with the textile that best fits their needs.

3. Knowing what kinds of house fabrics are similar to other textiles will help to make the most cost-effective decisions.

Understand what house textiles are made of

Fabrics are either natural or synthetic, which means man-made, and there are pros and cons with each. Natural fibers commonly used in home furnishing textiles include silk, linen, wool and cotton. Synthetic fibers used in home textiles include acetate, acrylic, nylon, polyester and rayon.
Try:  Find a complete list of synthetic and natural fabrics used for home decorating at Caroline Center. Go to Ditzy Prints to learn how to safely determine the content of a fabric by conducting a burn test on a small swatch of the fabric.

Learn about the weave of different furnishing fabrics

The weave of a fabric indicates how the fabric is woven together on a loom and not what fabric content the textile contains. Some common weaves used for decorating house fabric includes satin, brocade, damask and jacquard.
Try:  Look at Fibre2fashion.com or Soller Composites for illustrations and descriptions of different weaves and the fabrics that come woven that way.

Know how weights of home fabrics differ

The weight of a fabric is the density of the fabric and the number of fibers woven into the fabric. It is measured by weight per square yard or meter. The same kinds of fabric can be light weight, medium weight or heavy weight. Weight is also sometimes classified as top-weight or bottom-weight.
Try:  Find a guide explaining fabric weight at Favorite Fabrics. Use a fabric weight conversion chart like the one provided by Fashion-Incubator, if buying home decoration fabrics from overseas.

Recognize eco-friendly home furnishing fabric

There are increasingly more eco-friendly decorative furnishing fabrics available and at an affordable price. Eco-friendly fabrics include organic cottons of different weaves from knits to denim, hemp and bamboo. Eco-friendly fabrics are dyed and printed with low-impact, highly reactive dyes, which are best for the environment.
Try:  Find a wide variety of eco-friendly home fabric at Crypton and HartsFabric.com.

• Once you understand home furnishing fabrics key terms, you can combine a wide range of coordinating custom fabric products for the home that vary in content, such as satin for drapes and pillows, and brocade for furniture.