Commercial upholstery ratings: which fabric numbers belong on a schedule

For contract upholstery the abrasion figure on a data sheet only means something with the test method printed beside it. Two methods are in circulation and they do not convert into one another. Martindale, run to ISO 12947-2 or to ASTM D4966, counts cycles until the specimen breaks down. Wyzenbeek, ASTM D4157, counts double rubs against a cotton duck abradant. The Association for Contract Textiles asks for 30,000 double rubs or 40,000 cycles for high traffic public space upholstery. BS 2543 grades severe contract at 40,000 cycles, EN 14465 grades A at 35,000. Past about 100,000 the number stops predicting anything. Put the method and the figure on the schedule, never the figure on its own.

Two tests, two units, no conversion

Martindale

A circular specimen is clamped flat in an abrasion head and rubbed against a standard worsted wool cloth in a continuously changing pattern that does not repeat, so the fabric is worn in every direction rather than along one line. Camira sets the conditions out in its technical paper on abrasion: “The fabric is abraded at a force of 12 kPa and the worsted cloth changed every 50,000 cycles.” The end point is specimen breakdown, which ISO 12947-2 defines as determined by inspection at fixed intervals. The result is reported in cycles.

One line in the scope of that standard is worth reading before a vinyl or a coated fabric is scheduled. ISO 12947-2 applies to textile fabrics including nonwovens, and it explicitly excludes coated and laminated fabrics, which are sent to ISO 5470 instead. A coated upholstery material carrying a Martindale style number is therefore often not carrying an ISO 12947 number, and the two are not interchangeable. Ask which method was used.

Wyzenbeek

The Wyzenbeek machine works the other way round. The specimen is pulled taut in a frame and held stationary while a standard abradant, in the contract world an ACT approved number 10 cotton duck, is drawn back and forth across it under load. One pass forward and back is one double rub. Because the rub runs along a single axis, the warp and weft directions are tested separately and the lower of the two results is the one that should be published.

The instinct is to convert one figure into the other. It cannot be done. Camira states it without hedging.

There is absolutely no correlation between the tests, so it is not possible to estimate the abrasion results that would be achieved on one test if the results of the other test are already known.

Camira, The abrasion debate

The thresholds worth writing down

Three schemes set the numbers that circulate in Australian specifications, and none of them is an Australian scheme. The Association for Contract Textiles guidelines arrive with North American product, BS 2543 and EN 14465 arrive with British and European product, and a local fabric house will quote whichever its testing laboratory used. Read the scheme, then read the category, then read the number.

A general office floor sits at the top of those bands rather than the bottom. The seat is shared, it is cleaned more often than a domestic one, and the people using it arrive with laptop bags, lanyards and jeans rivets. Specifying to the low traffic figure because a lounge chair is in a quiet corner is how a breakout sofa ends up pilled at the front edge in its second year.

Where the number stops working

Everything above about 100,000 is decoration. The Association for Contract Textiles requires anyone publishing a result beyond its guideline to carry a disclaimer, and the wording is blunt: “Abrasion test results exceeding ACT Performance Guidelines are not an indicator of product lifespan.” ACT also reports that a 2009 study of the same fabrics across laboratories found a variance of at least 60 per cent, and asks specifiers to read a published result as a range rather than as a precise value. Camira makes the same point about scaling: a fabric with double the number of abrasion cycles does not indicate double the service life.

The reason is in the test itself. Abrasion is measured on a flat specimen under an even load. A seat is none of those things. The load concentrates on the crowned front edge of the foam, on the stitch line of a boxed cushion, on the outside corner of an arm where a sleeve drags across it a hundred times a day. ACT is explicit that fabrics in service fail through cleaning, maintenance, misuse and the wrong application rather than through surface abrasion alone. Nothing in a cycle count captures any of that.

The rest of the data sheet

Abrasion is one line on a technical sheet that usually carries five or six. The others are the ones that explain why a fabric that passed the abrasion threshold still looks tired, and each has its own standard and its own scale.

Colour fastness to light is the one most often skipped and the one that most often causes an argument. A lobby chair on the glazed side of a floor is under measurable ultraviolet load every working day, and a low blue wool figure will show as a two tone chair where the arm has sat in the sun. Seam slippage matters in the opposite situation: a tight, sculpted shape pulls at the seam, and a fabric with a loose construction and a high abrasion figure can still open along a stitch line.

Fire, and where the Australian rules actually bite

European technical sheets report EN 1021-1 and EN 1021-2, the smouldering cigarette and match flame ignition tests, usually alongside a BS 7176 classification. BS 7176 sorts non domestic seating into four hazard levels by where the furniture goes. SATRA sets the categories out: low hazard covers offices, schools, colleges, universities, museums, exhibitions and day centres; medium hazard covers hotel bedrooms, public buildings, restaurants, places of public entertainment, public halls, bars, casinos, hospitals and hostels; high hazard covers sleeping accommodation in certain hospital wards and hostels, and off shore installations; very high hazard is prison cells. Low hazard is satisfied by EN 1021-1 and EN 1021-2 on the cover and filling together. Medium and high hazard add a timber crib ignition source from BS 5852.

Australia has its own ignition standards for the same job. AS/NZS 3744.3 covers the nominal 160 mL/min and 350 mL/min gas flame sources, which it states are identical to the sources in BS 5852, and AS/NZS 3744.2 covers the match flame equivalent source. A fabric tested to EN 1021 has been tested against the European equivalents of those sources, which is why an imported soft seating range will usually arrive with EN 1021 evidence rather than AS/NZS 3744 evidence.

What the National Construction Code actually asks for

This is the part that gets assumed rather than checked. Specification 7 of NCC 2022 Volume One sets fire hazard properties for floor linings and floor coverings, wall and ceiling linings, air handling ductwork, lift cars, sarking type materials, insulation, attachments to internal floors, walls and ceilings, proscenium curtains, escalators and moving walkways, and fixed seating in a Class 9b building used as a theatre, public hall or the like. Loose furniture is not on that list. A task chair, a breakout sofa and a lounge chair are not regulated by Specification 7.

Two exceptions sit inside the same document and both are easy to walk into. Fixed seating in the audience area or auditorium of a Class 9b theatre or public hall carries a spread-of-flame index of 0 and a smoke-developed index of 5. And wall and ceiling linings require a Group Number determined in accordance with AS 5637.1, which the Australian Building Codes Board explains is established by the room test in AS ISO 9705 or the cone calorimeter test in AS/NZS 3837. The moment the same upholstery fabric is stretched over a fixed wall panel rather than a cushion, it stops being furniture and becomes a lining, and the question changes from abrasion to Group Number.

Geneva specifies both sides of that line, so the distinction comes up on almost every job: Lintex Mood Fabric Wall and RAPT custom acoustic wall covering are wall mounted and need the lining evidence, while the soft seating in the same room does not.

Two fabrics, read the way a specifier reads them

Two published technical sheets, both for wool rich commercial upholstery, show how differently the same information can be organised.

Camira Blazer publishes 100 per cent virgin wool at 460 grams per square metre plus or minus 5 per cent, independently certified to 45,000 Martindale cycles or better, light fastness of 4 to 6 to ISO 105-B02, and EN 1021-1 and EN 1021-2 with a BS 7176 low hazard classification. Every number a European specification asks for is there, and the abrasion figure clears the severe contract and ACT high traffic thresholds without being extravagant about it.

Instyle Origin publishes 76 per cent Australian and New Zealand wool with 15 per cent nylon and 9 per cent polyester, an abrasion result of 100,000 plus Martindale, and fire testing to AS/NZS 1530.3 and AS/NZS 3837 with a BCA Group 2 result. The abrasion figure is past the point where more cycles prove anything further. The part of that sheet that changes what can be drawn is the Group 2 result, because it is the evidence that lets the same textile go onto a wall panel in an Australian building.

That is the whole argument in two data sheets. The abrasion number qualifies a fabric for a seat. The fire evidence, and which standards it was tested to, decides where else the fabric can go.

Cleaning is a specification, not an afterthought

The cleaning instruction is the fabric house’s, not the furniture maker’s and not the cleaner’s. Cleaning codes printed on a swatch card are a supplier convention rather than a standard, so the only instruction worth carrying into an operations manual is the written one from the fabric house for that reference. In health, aged care and education settings, where a covering is wiped down between users, that instruction usually decides the selection before abrasion is even discussed.

Geneva specifies upholstered pieces across all of those settings, from the Seventy Five Care armchair through to the Story Sofa and the hard wearing Cosmo Easy Chair, and the same question is asked every time: which fabric, in which construction, approved by whom, cleaned how. The full range sits in lounge chairs and soft seating, with the smaller loose pieces in ottomans.

What belongs on the schedule

A fabric line on a furniture schedule that a builder, a fabric house and a furniture maker can all act on carries eight things.

• Fabric house, range, reference and colourway, written in full.
• The abrasion result with the method named: cycles to ISO 12947-2 or ASTM D4966, or double rubs to ASTM D4157.
• Composition and weight in grams per square metre.
• Colour fastness to light to ISO 105-B02, where the piece sits near glazing.
• The fire evidence appropriate to the application, which for loose seating is usually EN 1021-1 and EN 1021-2 or AS/NZS 3744, and for anything fixed to a wall is a Group Number to AS 5637.1.
• The fabric house’s written cleaning instruction for that reference.
• The furniture maker’s approval of that fabric on that model, and its metreage.
• Fabric width, pattern repeat and whether the fabric can be railroaded.

Two of those eight are numbers. The other six are the reasons the numbers hold up.

Reading this alongside the rest of a schedule

Fabric selection rarely travels alone. A high backed sofa is usually doing acoustic work as well as seating work, and the back height that screens a conversation is set by geometry rather than by the cover: that is covered in acoustic soft seating and what a high back actually does. Where the settings themselves sit on the floor plate, and how much area each one needs, is in the anatomy of a Sydney CBD floor. For the makers behind most of the upholstered pieces named here, see Jonas Ihreborn and Offecct, and for the wall mounted textiles, Lintex.

Frequently asked

Geneva specifies, supplies and installs upholstered furniture for Australian workplaces, and we will get the technical sheet for the exact reference and the maker’s fabric approval in writing before anything goes on a schedule. Bring the drawing and the setting to our team, or see how the pieces work together across a floor in workplace furniture.