What affects the price of care home soft furnishings?

February 28, 2022 Liam Dible

What affects the price of care home soft furnishings is one question that we are often getting asked by our customers.

It’s down to two different reasons, the main reason is down to the cost of the fabric you have chosen and the second is the amount of gather (the fullness) a curtain has.

How does the fabric affect the price of soft furnishings?

There are many different types of fabric available on the market today with each one having a different manufacturing process which means that some fabrics are more expensive than others. With such a wide range of different fabrics available some may take longer to manufacture than others and others may use more expensive processes to get the desired finish which all affect how much the fabric will cost. Velvet, for example, takes a lot longer and is a lot harder to make than a Panama fabric as the weave on velvet is much more intricate and is more time consuming to make and is, therefore, a more expensive fabric.

How does fullness affect the price of curtains?

The amount of gather a curtain has or the fullness of the curtain is where things start to get a little more technical. When a soft furnishings manufacturer is given measurements for a curtain size, they add on a certain amount of extra fabric to allow for the gather when they are pulled shut and this varies between different manufacturers.

If, for example, the fullness of the curtain was 1.75x this means that if your window was 1 metre wide, then the curtains would be made 1.75 metres wide so that when they are pulled shut it doesn’t look like a straight piece of fabric.

As mentioned above, the fullness varies between different manufacturers with some manufacturers having it as low as 1.2x which results in a curtain that almost looks flat and other manufacturers having it at 1.75x which results in a neatly gathered curtain when pulled closed. The higher the percentage the more fabric there is being used which therefore means that the overall price of the curtains will be higher, whereas a manufacturer that uses a lower fullness will use less fabric which will result in cheaper curtains.

At Edison & Day we use 1.75x fullness to ensure that our curtains are of the highest quality possible.

Can I tell how expensive a fabric is before I get a quote?

In most cases, yes you can.

Most contract soft furnishing suppliers will spilt this out by using something called fabric bands, this is a way of grading the fabrics by their cost to give an indication of how much the overall price of the item will be. The grading usually ranges from Band A – Z with A being the cheapest option, some suppliers may use numbers instead of letters, but the concept is still the same.

You would need to check with your supplier to see how they grade the different fabrics, but the above way is how it is done in most cases.

I trust this article has been useful in explaining what affects the cost of curtains but if you still have any questions, we are more than happy to help you. You can view our curtains and soft furnishings section below or contact us and we will be more than happy to go through your questions with you.

Who is Edison & Day?

We are a UK manufacturer of care home furniture and have been supplying the market with high-quality furniture for 15 years, we create furniture and experiences that have the personal touch.

We have the largest care home furniture selection in the UK that is available to order online. With our industry-leading Dayex service, you can have your new furniture in as little as 5 working days.