There are one or two wools that are possibly ‘better’ (ie warmer or softer) but they are extremely expensive (such as Vicuna). They are SO expensive and ‘rare’ that you will never come across them in reality unless you work in a very niche area of the fashion fabrics market. I have never even heard about such fabrics being available for interiors use, let alone seen or touched them. Although I would imagine it would not be dissimilar from cashmere!

Which brings me back to Cashmere Throws.

Maybe you already have a Cashmere Throw, or possibly a Cashmere scarf. They feel wonderful. It is not just marketing hype either, there are a variety of technical reasons why the Cashmere yarn makes fabrics that are warmer and softer to the touch than any other woolen yarn.

Yet there remains a huge variation in price from one Cashmere throw to the next. Why?

We have struggled to answer that question ourselves. Cashmere Throws can retail at £2,000. Yet the quality is only very good. Scarves too can easily cost several hundreds of pounds (and upwards).

So we are about to release Cashmere Throws that are better than everyone else. We are using: higher quality, thicker yarns than anyone else; sourcing our own designs, qualities and colours from the best mills.

I can guarantee that if you put one of our throws next to any competing alternative you would always choose a KOTHEA Cashmere Throw. We would even let our competitor choose the criteria that they wish to compete on! We are SO confident that our throws win on all counts.

Or you could go and buy one for £2,000 from somewhere else and be unsure that you have the best.

We have previously covered on this blog many aspects of the business of interior design often focusing on sales and marketing issues. Mostly marketing on the internet using sites like Facebook but also covering sales issue for interior designers with retail spaces. The following articles give more…

You can download this document by clicking on the pdf icon.

1. If you are sourcing furniture for your client then the vendor of the furniture needs to provide you with appropriate information to prove compliance.
2. If you are specifying fabric for furniture to be made up, then you need to ask the fabric supplier for the fabric’s compliance to the standards and/or arrange fire treatment.
3. You will need to ensure that you have specified the appropriate fabrics for the visible and non-visible parts of the furniture.
4. You will need to liaise with your upholsterer to ensure that any additional materials such as foam and fabric lining are adequate.

The cigarette and match tests fall under BS 5852. The test(s) involve the fabric being exposed to different ‘ignition sources’ essentially simulating possible real life causes of domestic fires. The ‘ignition sources’ are ways that the fabric could plausibly be burnt. There are 8 different sources/types of combustion but you only normally need to deal with sources 0, 1 and 5.
Source 0 = Cigarette (smouldering cigarette)
Source 1 = Match (simulated match)
Source 5 = Crib. (Wooden crib or Crib 5)

Source 5, or Crib 5 as it is frequently know as, is usually a contract standard for upholstery. In contract upholstery you might also come across BS 7176 which determines specific risk or hazard areas that your fabric is being installed into. In simple terms, BS 7176 covers all 3 of the above tests. Furthermore, whilst Crib 5 is the highest standard of the 3 tests it does not follow that a fabric which passes Crib 5 will also pass the cigarette and match test – even though it is likely to.

Exceptions, Mandates & Exemptions

• Fabric is exempted if it is 75% by weight of cotton, silk, viscose, wool i.e. 75% natural fibres. A FR inter-liner must also be used to keep the exemption.
• Furniture MUST IN ALL CASES pass the cigarette test. No exceptions.
• Cigarette Test will be undertaken using standard foam – this presents a worst-case scenario.
• For fabrics that do not inherently pass the required test then treatments are usually available, often where the back side of the fabric is coated with a fire resistant substance not affecting the look and feel of the fabric
• For already made-up furniture, we doubt that it is possible to treat it retrospectively to pass the tests. However it may be possible to prove that the fabrics that have already been used are in fact compliant.

BS5867 part 2 type B is a contract standard for fire retardancy for CURTAINS.

As an interior designer you do *NOT* need to understand the details of the test nor the performance criteria that needs to be achieved.

However interior designers are responsible for the project/installation and because this is a serious are concerning fire risk you DO NEED to:
- Be certain what standard is required for your project/installation;
- Know that you are specifying fabric that meets the appropriate standard; and
- Prove that the fabric you have installed is up to the job.

So here is what you need to do to achieve that, essentially what you need to do to do your job and to ensure you have covered the bases of your responsibility.

1. Determine the fire retardancy standards that need to be adhered to. This may involve contacting the local fire officer. Determine what documentation you need to provide them.

2. Liaise with your fabric supplier to determine if the fabric either:

- inherently meets the standards; or

- requires treatment.

3. On purchasing the fabric, specify the treatment required. You would say to the fabric company “Treat the fabric to the contract curtain standard BS 5867 part 2 type B, and provide me with documentation showing this has been done”.

4. What you have done now is to specify what standard of treatment has to be undertaken. By doing that there is no guarantee that the fabric will pass the appropriate test even though it has been treated to a standard where is should pass the test. Normally you will receive a document saying that the fabric has been treated to the standard. THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT HAS PASSED THE STANDARD. You need to determine if you want your specific batch of fabric to be specifically tested (after treatment). For larger projects this will almost certainly be prudent to undertake. You will need to purchase additional fabric prior to treatment and engage the services of a fabric testing factory (not treatment factory). At the end of that process you will receive documentation stating that the fabric meets the required standard.

Here is related information on fire retardacy for contract upholstery (Crib 5, BS7176 BS5852) and durability of fabric for  contract and domestic upholstery. More…

The following test details are not normally required to be known by the designer:

Test method

A sample of the fabric, vertically held, is exposed to a small flame.

For type B (Hotels, etc) the ease of ignition is observed. It is also noted if the flame reaches one any edge of the specimen and/or if any burning pieces of fabric fall down.

For type C (NHS) the fabric is further analysed to see what happens once the flame stops but when the fabric still may be glowing.

NB: The fabric is tested before and after laundering
type B (12 wash cycles at 40°c)
type C (50 wash cycles at 40°c)

Test Performance Criteria

Type B Performance Criteria: The edges must remain completely intact and no burning debris should fall.

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We are in the advanced stages of launching a substantial new range of bespoke Cashmere Throws with standard and custom sizes; custom colours and great standard designs and colourways. Quite a big leap ahead of many companies, certainly in the UK.

We will be introducing new yarns of a higher ply rating than any we know to be available in the UK, offering the thickest and most luxurious feel.

We already have exquisite hand-woven linen throws and are considering other yarns for throws like Chenille.

Anyway, just a heads-up. Check where your silk velvet is being manufactured and double check the quality.

Perhaps the most expensive yarn is from the vicuña (vicuna, vicugna), which is a camel-like animal found in the high alpine areas of the South American Andes. Whilst not an endangered species it is a rare animal and difficult to farm as it tends to escape!

Cashmere yarn comes from the cashmere goat and other goats such as the pashmina goat.

Cashmere and Vicuna have an outer layer of hair which is coarse and rough but protective for the animal. This is the guard hair. Underneath the guard hair is a warm layer of much, much softer hair. This underlayer consists of hollow-fibred hair that is an excellent insulator. The vicuna has the finest of these fibres of any (resultant) wool anywhere in the world.

About 400g of yarn can be produced from one Vicuna compared to 150g from the Cashmere goat, the latter being a smaller animal. There are many more Cashmere goats in the world and I suspect this is why Cashmere is relatively affordable – as it is produced in much larger volumes in a more competitive market.

As an indication a Vicuna scarf would cost in excess of US$1000. As far as I know it is not produced in sufficient quantities to be available in a suitable form for interiors use (I could be wrong). But if it were it could be woven with silk to produce THE MOST EXPENSIVE AND BEST woolen silk velvet in the world. A further problem is that the Vicuna fibre can readily be damaged when dyed, again making significant production quantities problematic.

Now, as much of the Cashmere yarn produced comes from China, Australia and other countries…in fact just about anywhere other than Kasmir! it strikes me that is an opporutnity waiting to happen for some illustrious, economically-minded, goat breeder out there with friends in the textiles industry. If the production problems could be overcome I could see that there still would be a market for an interiors fabric retailing at in excess of GBP800/m  (US£1300/yard) – albeit a small one.

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This yacht is in Charter at Anacortes Yacht Charter. We updated the photos since Marilee Maricich, interior designer, finished an overhaul on the interior. (fivestardetailing@hotmail.com). We produced this for the Charter Company to display in their 17 x 22 inch album of boats…. There are 2 pages. … Read More

via Yacht and Ship Photography

17 Wool
27 Viscose
32 Polypropylene
35 Polyester
69 Nylon

Clearly natural wool wins hands down!

As a side note, the “Campaign For Wool” should start to get media coverage throughout the rest of 2010 with the patronage of HRH Prince Charles. The society of British Interior Design are planning to give wool a big push “All we are saying is…give fleece a chance”. Their tagline. Great! Well it made me laugh!

Some velvets are woven with a nap others are not. It is not a problem either way. If there is a nap you need to know which way it goes as that affects the process of upholstering. When you run your hand down the mohair velvet or silk velvet the smoothed direction indicates the direction of the nap. Remember this, it is important.

I’m assuming that you have already checked that the fabric is not damaged and that each piece is from the same dye lot.

The nap should be upholstered downwards for:

- the back;

- the seat; and

- side surfaces.

The nap should be upholstered from the outside inwards for:

- arm rests.

How do you flip your cushions? Top to bottom or left to right?

Most people flip from top to bottom. It is therefore standard upholstering practice to upholster the front and the back the opposite way. IE when they are flipped over the nap is the same.

You should use a layer of wadding between the foam and the fabric. The wadding can be either cotton or synthetic it does not really matter but check with any fire rating requirements. Again check that you are using the right kind of foam but HR foam or cold foam are both fine.

However if the pile is vertical then we advise the additional use of a cotton slip-cover.

Going back to the foam for a minute we advise that you use white wadding. In certain circumstances it is possible that grey wadding will ‘bleed’ causing marks on your beautiful Mohair Velvet. For example this may be caused from moisture used in the cleaning process.

Always use wadding on the arm rests as a protective layer to help eliminate ‘sharp’ edges. Using wadding on arm rests will thus reduce wear and tear considerably.

For the piping never use synthetic piping cord, always use cotton piping cord. As with the arm rests this will reduce wear and tear by eliminating the ‘sharper edges’.

Again to reduce wear and tear also use the length of the fabric to make the piping. this will look better as well.

Happy Upholstering

Coming from the designer/producer/supplier of fabrics angle makes it a little tricky for us. We do not feel it is our job to stage our fabrics on a photo set in a room of our liking. We are not the interior designers, that’s your job! We may see one of our fabrics in a certain way – for example I always associate our faux leathers with bar stools (misspent youth). However you may well see many other angles: wall covering, cushions and so on. So we try not to second-guess you. the interior designer. So, our challenge is to show some of the fine detail of our products without you being able to either see it in 3D yourself or feel it. Tricky. Have a look.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy the photos (along with the parts of the new collections on flickr) and any comments will be greatly appreciated.

Let’s start. Facebook, by default, will not do all the bits that I would imagine you would probably want it to do. After you have created a basic page for the first time you will probably struggle to figure out how to make it just right. You may well get confused and frustrated, I know I did. Then you will figure out that actually it’s not possible to do what you want to do on a default Facebook Fan Page. You will need to use Facebook Applications to change various bits of the page. There are a plethora of these applications, I’ll tell you the ones you need to know to produce a reasonable stab at a first IMPROVEMENT over what you already have.

OK here are the various key parts of the page that you will have to alter and work with (point number 1 you should already have done yourself). I list the parts of the screen first and then tell you afterwards what to do about each.

1. Get your business name and image added to the top left hand corner. Add you contact details and the like to the info tab.

2. Your vanity url eg KOTHEA’s is www.facebook.com/kothea. Here is a blog post I wrote earlier on this potentially tricky subject.

3. If you have read all our posts over the last year or so you will know that we keep saying GET A BLOG AND WRITE EVERY WEEK. I won’t dwell on the subject, you just need to do it for a plethora of reasons. However once you have a blog you will need to put it on Facebook as well as where you originally write it. you will need to use an application to avoid duplicating your effort. Like This.

4. Tabs. You will need to add new tabs containing the information about your organisation that you consider relevent. e.g. compare   this “traditional info” tab to this “additional info” tab . (Traditional vs. Additional). The frist one is from Pepsi and at first you might think what a poor show they have made of the tab. They have not. the problem is facebook. pepsi put the minimum amount of information on a page that Facebook says you have to have. Then, like KOTHEA, we put all the juicy bits onto another tab that we have control of. Far from perfect but that’s life.

5. Then you will want to customise the bits in the left hand side column. Again, www.facebook.com/kothea shows you some buttons we added on the left hand side to link to our twitter account, our real blog, our flickr feed and a final button to prompt an action to contact us via our real web page. You get the idea and can probably see scope to add many more buttons or actions or images that we have not considered.

How do I do those 5 things?:

1. You should have figured this bit out yourself. on your fan page just look for a mini “pencil” like image appearing near the bit you want to change. click it and change it. Get a nice big logo on there.

2. I refer again to this post <here>.

3. A Facebook application called SOCIAL RSS is used by about 500,000 people. This is how you get the RSS feed of your blog onto a new Facebook Tab. Just click the “Go To Application” button on the top left hand corner. It’s free and it works. There is also a slightly better/faster paid-for version, probably not worth the extra yet.

4. For an “extended info tab” you will need the aptly named EXTENDED INFO APPLICATION – click to go there. Again it is free. Here is KOTHEA’s example. The application works by creating a BLANK TAB, you then use the application to create all the fields (bits) on it. It is NOT straightforward to use. I would say 3/10 difficulty (with 10/10 being impossible). So persevere and you will get there.

5. To create new fields on the left hand side Facebook have kindly produced the Static FBML application. Click here to go to the page and add the application to your profile with the button in the top left hand corner. FBML is a bit like HTML. So if you do not know any html you will find this DIFFICULT (9/10). But if you already know HTML then Facebook and their application will only confuse you for a little while before you figure it out (3/10). I would imagine that with FBML you can give your Facebook fan page a similar look and feel to your web site – if you really want to do that.

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  Thankfully the otherwise sterile and strict Hospital designs are undergoing great developments. Isnt this one of the most important spaces in which we need to work with the phychology of implementing designs where one can feel more at ease.     From top: 1. Cannon Design; Lindner Center of Hope  2. NBBJ; Swedish Orthopedic Institute   3. Centro Studi Progettazione Edilizia  4. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center_Gamma Knife Centre      … Read More

via ANNA HANSSON INTERIOR DESIGN's BLOG

A clear advantage for the contract interior designer is that the FR Flame / Fire Resistance is an industry known and understood property. There are no further complications, risks and costs involved in fire treatment.

However many Trevira fabrics do not meet the Crib 5 standard and further treatment to reach that standard may be required so you must understand the usage and required FR properties.

It is difficult for many FR treatment companies to treat Trevira to pass Crib 5. There are inherent difficulties with the Trevira yarn that cause this. However it is possible to FR treat it to Crib 5. Please contact us for further information.

I will return later in another post to KOTHEA’s quite remarkable sales figures for the financial year just finished. Most surprising, especially considering we are in the midst of a recession. We had our best ever year and by quite a large margin.

We expect some coverage of the new collections in World of Interiors and Elle decoration but, again, more on that at another time.

Where can you see our collections? Well, we are as elusive as ever but we are starting to digitize some images to our flickr feed (click the images on the right or here). The flickr update is ongoing, there is information on flickr now but some of the images are not final and some images do not have full associated descriptions / product details but we are woking on that this week. Our usual clients will receive the new collections in due course starting in late summer; if you need them more urgently for pressing projects of course we will be happy to oblige. Please get in contact in the usual way.

Not all are in production yet but most sampling is available now.

As a very broad summary we have:

1. New colours of several existing ranges including faux leather;

2. More velvets including patterned and crush;

3. Striped, double width linens;

4. Upholstery weight linen; and

5. A few more interesting one-off designs in limited colourways like the one heading up this blog post.

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1 – What are your qualifications? First you must do your homework.  Do you want a whole-house redo or just one room?  Maybe you need furniture or some basic accessorizing.  Is your lighting keeping you in the dark? 2 – What is the designer’s specialty? Some designers are more comfortable with residential design, others prefer to work with small businesses.  These are two distinct design disciplines that have different furnishings, finishes and fa … Read More

via You Be the Interior Designer by Chris Mills Design

Let's have a look at the value proposition of an interior designer: When we look at interior design marketing  we often see keywords like experience resources creativity All inherently important characteristics of a good designer, but more detail is needed. Detail about the process of designing a space. So designers should include a description of how a job will develop over the weeks and months that it takes to complete. The more detailed the wo … Read More

via Keep it simple

The Kelly Hoppen Design School has been reviewed on Vogue.com, take a look and see what they said about us! … Read More

via Kelly Hoppen' Blog

Trends are of course, an important thing to consider, in Spain as well as in other prominent countries of design. So I interviewed a new interior designer on the UK scene, Sarah of Sarah Jane Glibbery Interior Design. Sarah explains what she thinks of the current style in England, compared to Barcelona and its vintage extravaganza. Read the interview. … Read More

via caerengracia.info

As an interior designer, I'm often asked by my clients if it's a good idea to use similar colors and furnishings in a room. Their common belief is that similar colors will create a safe, clean-looking design. I tell them that although the design will be safe and clean-looking, it will also be very uninteresting. Why do I say that? Because a truly interesting room design requires dimension in fabric textures and natural material finishes, as well … Read More

via Furniture & Interior Design

But let’s go back two steps.

Firstly, in the UK Google is THE dominant search engine. We, KOTHEA, advertise to interior designers and I run similar campaigns on Yahoo and Bing. I can tell you that 95% of the impressions and clicks come from Adwords. So if you are short on time just focus on Adwords. It is a similar scenario in the US but Google’s monopoly is not so great there and Yahoo is more prominant.

Secondly, advertising through Facebook and Adwords is different proposition. This is because the audience that sees your ad has arrived at your ad through a quite different process. In Adwords you get put in front of people who type in the keywords you believe to be relevant to your product/service offering ie people who are actively looking at your keywords NOW eg they may have just typed “Find Interior Designer In London”.

Whereas in Facebook the users’ profiles are analysed so you can choose their demographics or select by keywords in their profile that match your target market eg keywords “Yacht Owner” and age profile 20+. Your ad is then displayed to all 20+ year olds who own up to being – or who claim to be – yacht owners. The Facebook ads are displayed periodically (and repeatedly) and could be displayed when the recipient is organising a cinema date with friends – or it could be displayed when they are researching interiors products for their yacht, you just don’t know.

I appreciate that my description is a little negative towards Facebook but there are benefits and dis-benefits of each approach to audience selection. In some scenarios Facebook will be better for you. So you, the advertiser, must appreciate that when your ad is displayed the person seeing it on Facebook will probably be at VERY different point in their interior designer selection process than someone who sees your ad on Adwords.

So if the abovementioned Yacht Owner is typing in “Find Interior Designer In London” into Google then I suggest it is likely that he/she is VERY interested in your services as an interior designer NOW. However if your advert is displayed to them in Facebook there is no guarantee WHATSOEVER that the Yacht Owner is interested in having anything interior designed at this moment, or ever, BUT they might be.

So think about the AIDA model ie Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action. The AIDA model represents a potential customers interest in your service. Your initial contacts with customers create awareness of your interior design service. You then hope to move them through the ‘customer voyage’ by increasing their interaction with your organisation to a point of action when they decide to commission you. I would suggest that your Facebook ad is more geared towards ‘Awareness’ part of customer acquitision whereas your Adwords ad is more geared towards an impending purchase-related ‘Action’.

Furthermore it might be a generally reasonable assumption that Facebook “Yacht Owners” probably own yachts and you can refine that to indicate the owners possible levels of affluence (eg simplistically to: Superyacht Owner). However someone typing “Find Interior Designer In London” could be very affluent or not. They could be someone like me who works for a fabric house trying to prospect for customers or they could be a potential customer looking for a designer for a restaurant or hotel or villa or, well lots of reasons. What I am trying to say here is that lots of types (segments) of people using your keywords in google may NOT match your target audience even though they are typing in the ‘right’ words to the Google search engine. So you are faced with the difficulty of writing copy that attracts only the right people and does not cause expensive clicks from people who are never going to buy from you. You are also faced with the dilemma of how to tailor your one ad to many segments (hotel-villa-yacht-restaurant owners etc). Also the further dilemma of what keyword-ad combinations actually work.

There’s more to go into on this subject but I’ll distill the rest into some recommendations. So without further ado here is what I think you should do:

1. Facebook

• Write an ad that is positional of your services. More of an ad to further your brand awareness rather than selling your services today.
• Use graphics where possible.
• Be truthful.

2. Adwords

• Write LOTS of different ads and get Adwords to rotate them and for it to choose the best ones.
• Use the keywords in the ads as keywords get highlighted in the ad.
• Really, really think what your customers will be searching for. Ideally ask some existing customers so you know for sure.
• Take Adwords suggestions for capitalisation. eg it suggests I use KotheA and neither KOTHEA nor kothea. This draws the eye to the ad by using mixed capitalisation.
• Use graphics where possible.
• Be truthful.

If you search through my blog there are other related posts on these subjects. Look at the category “The Business of Interior Design” or the tag “Sales & Marketing In Interior Design” – they may well also pull up related blogs by other people.

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Honestly, we do have more important things here at KOTHEA to worry about other than our company strap line – such as the Autumn 2010 collection. However we have used the “Passionate About Fabrics” strap line for our business for over 7 years and, whilst it does accurately depict how we behave and feel, we have noticed that quite a few other companies in a wide range of fields also use the “Passionate About [something]” line as well. I’m sure it’s very true about them also, but it potentially kind of devalues what we are saying.

So we are procrastinating over numerous coffees as to what we should change our strap line to, if at all. Remember it does say what we want it to but we are concerned that the phrase may be overused elsewhere.

So here’s our thinking and you can vote on your preference at the end.

1. Leave ‘as-is’.
2. Appassionato Di Tessuti – Same words in Italian, where many of our designs are produced.
3. Ispirati Da Tessuti – Inspired by Fabrics. Lose the passion, regain the inspiration?!
4. Tessuti Di Ispirazione – Inspirational Fabrics

Please give us your opinion:

Maison & Objet said: 2010′s trends are for Grey, Linen, Pink, Natural Wood Finishes, Metalics, Over-scaled Motifs, Stripes & Ethnic.

Kelly Hoppen said: LINEAR SHABBY CHIC,

Colours:  neutrals still rock and always will. But with added bits like art, photography etc. can be anything and everything

Carpets and rugs: PATTERN, SHAG and THICK PILES with a comfortable sinking feeling.

Walls: seductive and edged and capped in metals. Wallpaper will be also be massive this year and it will all be textural.

- Floors: there will be a lot of wood in all colours

Farrow & Ball said:

industrial colour trends – earthy shades of stone, clay, chalk and brick. Soft grey neutrals and inky darks. Uplift with splashes of citrus shades.

aquatic trends: subtle natural colours contrasting with strong inky blues

urban decay: strong vibrant colours with a vibrant edge, use dark and dramatic colours and inject zingy bright colours.

glitz and glamour: use rich opulent shades alongside shimmering metallics. Exotic combining colour and excess. The key is a myriad of colours.

We say: Interior Designers do not normally push particular products. Manufacturers have a bias towards what their R&D (or whims) have told them to sell. I’d always give more credence to what designers like Kelly Hoppen have to say. Fortunately for here she took the time to write those thoughts on her blog and unfortunately for many of you…you didn’t. HAVE MORE CONFIDENCE IN WHAT YOU DO, tell us about it and trends blog post is the easiest thing in the world to do.

If you are planning to have piping (made by rolling the fabric) then make sure that your chosen fabric can be used in that way. It is sometimes hard to roll thicker fabric.

Also bear in mind that your upholsterer might be overly cautious. So, for example, people are often told that some Mohair Velvets cannot be used for piping when they usually can.

However, if you fabric arrives and damage is apparent then:

1. Don’t cut it; and

2. Either reject it or get the courier to note the damage.

Ensure that the sample you have is the right way up. Mistakes are made. It could be back to front or rotated 90/180 degrees. Sometimes it is NOT obvious so check with the supplier.

The following is taken from BS 2543 and shows the ‘intended duty’ of the fabric:

OD = Occasional domestic – 6,000 rubs

LD = Light domestic – 15,000 rubs

GD = General domestic – 20,000  rubs

HD = Heavy domestic – 25,000 rubs

SD = Severe domestic/general contract – 30,000  rubs

SC = Severe contract Abrasion performance – 40,000 rubs