Fabrics, Colors and Upholstery

Forecasting
The fabric companies all go to the same source, Hammer said. “I think it’s the Color Marketing Group. When I go to a fabric market, the fabric designers are all on the same page. Their designers know exactly what’s happening in Europe and in apparel. It’s amazing how every mill has [the same offerings] – you know, it’s blue and brown this year, then it’s purple and green. Everyone’s on the same page, it’s so global.”

“Sometimes fashion doesn’t indicate what’s going to happen in home,” Lodhia said, “so I don’t really follow clothing fashion too much. I get influenced by Europe.” One place she likes to look for inspiration is the color story introduced at the Interior Lifestyles show. “Once I know what they’re doing, I get on it very fast. I don’t take all of it, I just take what I think will work for me. You have ways of finding out what’s happening, and then I do what’s in my gut.”

Trends
“There’s always a few trend colors,” Fil of Southern Textiles said. “Tiffany blue is supposed to be one of them. I keep hearing purple. The spa blue is still there. Mocha and anything is around. Mocha and pink, mocha and orange, mocha and blue. I’m seeing a lot of neutrals. We saw a lot of grays at the fabric show.”


Ensemble from Southern Textiles

“Orange, chocolate, cranberry red,” Lodhia said are trend colors.

Pat Dortch of Carriage House, which makes upholstered beds and bedding to match, said, “They’re doing our beds mostly in solids and in more neutrals and earthies.”

“Chocolate and browns are huge,” Rath said. “Earthy kind of looks. Brown and green, brown and blue, the green is still very big.”

Traditional colors will always be in style, Fil said. “There’s always going to be trends, there’s always going to be fashion, there’s always going to be color, but then you’re always going to get the people who want your basics, your traditionals, your more contemporary looks, but in a really clean, simple ensemble that is more neutral than anything else. Because obviously you can build your bedroom around something more neutral.”

“Everything goes on top of the bed,” Hammer said. “Upholstery fabric, woven jacquards, heavier fabrics. We’re seeing cotton prints, just sateen sheeting, lightweight. We’re seeing a lot of microfiber. There’s not any one standout. The microfiber, as with furniture, is so easy to maintain – it’s washable, a lot of them are stain-repellant. So it just makes sense in the bedroom too.”

“We still do a lot of the suedes,” Dortch said, for beds and bedding. “We got into some linens, which we’re doing well with, and then we do some damask. Still, I think the strongest are the suedes.”

“Sheen” is an important word in bedding fabrics. “What you see here is a lot of sheen,” Fil said, “and that’s what we saw from a lot of the companies at Showtime [the High Point textiles show]. They didn’t call it shine, they didn’t say it was shiny, they
didn’t call it metallic, but they did call it sheen. The fabrics have a lot of sparkle to it.”
Feel is as important as look in fabric. “The other thing we saw was texture,” Fil said. Their gray, black and white bed (page 19) combines several different textures. “There’s the sheen and shininess and slipperiness of the comforter and then there is a suede fabric, and then sort of the waffle weave of the Euros, and then the shams and then the
decorative pillows.”

Rath also believes that “Texture is still king! A printed cotton is nice, but you want to feel something – the microfibers do it, the chenilles do it, and they’re washable. You can dry microfibers in the dryer, and if anything, they just get softer and softer.” CottonBelle also uses some washable faux silks and is doing a lot with indoor/outdoor fabrics, which are perfect for sunrooms, patios and rooms with large windows. These fabrics resist fading, weather and even pet mischief.

Lodhia uses poly silk in her bedspreads, and in the pillows, she uses primarily dupioni silk from India and linen.

Fil said Southern Textiles does well with basics, like cotton duck and twill. “We’re
trying to get the high fashion looks without the luxury types of fabrics. We do a lot of polyester shantung. You can actually get the look for quite a bit less.” That ultimately translates to value for the consumer.

Upholstered bed from Carriage House

Beds themselves are dressing in fine fabrics. But when you already have an upholstered headboard, what do you put on the bed?

“We got into doing some bedding to go on top of our beds and we just assumed that people would be very matchy-matchy,” Dortch said. But he found that people liked to mix and match. “I thought they’d be buying more sets. We’re seeing people buying their bed as a unit and buying their bedding as a unit. People are looking ahead and saying, down the road we’re going to want to change the bedding anyway, so let’s get a bed that we like the color of and we know we’re going to live with.”

Southern Textiles makes a headboard upholstered in basic muslin, and then they sell slipcovers that match their bedding ensembles. “Some people prefer to do a plain slipcover if they’re doing a bold pattern on the comforter,” Fil said, while others match the headboard slipcover exactly to the comforter.

FLLS