A fabric collection under constant development

The fabric choice is a very important decision when choosing furniture you will be living for a long time. Therefore, we put great effort when we create our fabric collection. Every year we visit large fabric fairs like Proposte in Como in Italy and Mood in Brussels and are constantly looking for fabrics that meet our high standards - aesthetically and qualitatively. For quality and environmental reasons, we choose our fabrics only from Europe.

Our collection consists of about 100 fabrics that we keep in stock at our factory. We renew our fabric collection every year. We also have access to fabrics outside our standard collection.

Our requirements are rigorous to ensure your furniture stays beautiful and pleasant to use for many, many years. Below we describe the parameters of some of our choices: 

Martindale
The Martindale test is a method for determining a fabric's durability. The test consists of rubbing a fabric-covered plate against another plate under pressure. The resulting number is the number of revolutions the plate has spun when two yarns break. At Ire we recommend fabrics with a Martindale score of at least 15.000 for sofas and armchairs in a home setting. A public environment usually requires more durable fabrics with a Martindale score of 50.000. The fabrics in our collection must have a minimum Martindale score of 20.000.

Pilling
Most fabrics pill, more or less. Pilling is a measure of how easily the fabric pills. The scale runs from 1 - 5, with a score of 5 meaning that no pills occured. Our requirement is 3.5 - 5 on the pilling scale. More and more of our fabrics are made from natural materials. These fabrics may be more likely to pill, since natural fibres are shorter than artificial ones as a rule.

Lightfastness
A higher proportion of natural materials and stricter environmental requirements for our fabrics (including dying methods) impairs their lightfastness. Untreated fabrics fade more easily. The scale runs from 1 - 8.

Washing instructions
You will find washing instructions inside the fabric covers. If your clothing is removeable and washable it is good to know that the fabric needs to be damp when you put it back on.