Seeing new furniture pieces is so exciting! Fabrics seem to constantly be changing in design as well as colors! There has been so much plain over the last couple decades, we are finally seeing some heavy textures, plaids, strips and prints coming back, and in some color as well!
I think there are a couple reasons why we are seeing more patterns….
We have been stuck in our houses, and we are tired of everything being very blah!
Production of a lot of products has moved back to the US…and American manufacturing can do a lot of these more beautiful fabrics than just solid.
People are tired of the plain as it is much harder to keep clean….as it shows every water mark, coffee drip or pet soil! Heavier textures and prints are much better at camouflaging variables on fabric!
We are seeing the prints on chairs, recliners and pillows. Yes, you can put them on sofas and loveseats as well, but not as many people do it. When they do though, it is stunning! It has to be in the correct space of course. These smaller pieces, just as chairs are able to make a big impact in the room without having a ton of the print! This can give better flexibility to the room's future …so if you want a new look, changing a couple smaller pieces are less costly!
In Selecting the pieces, we usually start with the largest piece, and then go to the smallest. With the fabrics, finding the print first and then adding the solids is easier. So, it can be done either way. Sometimes it depends on the vision of the room or the lack of vision for the room. Other times we work a certain procedure, because of the personality of the client. Depending on how much of the room you are redoing, gives us input on where to start!
American manufacturers have lots of prints to choose from. People laugh because they think I am joking when I say you have 500 choices of fabrics to put on a chair. Typically imported furniture that comes across the ocean made or in a box to assemble here will still be solid and normally you only have maybe 3 choices to choose from! The imports were the reason we had all of the solids. Their production of fabrics is very inconsistent…. prints did not repeat correctly, colors changed, cheaper materials were/ are used. They could do solids well and that is what they sell! And solids are lower cost to manufacture so that is another reason plain fabrics have so much strength in the showrooms of big box stores!