Hi, I'm Chris with Roger and Chris and I'm here today answer an important question. I want a beautiful sofa, I have children, how do I make these two things work together?

Well, if you're look for fabric for your sofa, we've got a ton of options. I think the world of fabrics has evolved drastically probably even since you bought your last sofa. Performance fabrics have come a long way. I think sometimes when you say the word performance fabrics, or talked about fabrics that are solution dyed, you might think of things like Sunbrella, which is a great product, but sometimes that calls to mind a canvas that's used on a patio chair, or an umbrella or something like that. Not exactly, you know, the most welcoming type of fabric.

However, we now have performance fabrics that give you amazing looks and feels, very fashion forward colors and weaves, in a lot of different styles. We have everything from velvets, to canvases to linen blends, gosh, just a range of options that is gonna be very practical for you as well as beautiful. I think the things that you really need to focus on for family friendly fabrics, that's a lot of F's, would be durability. So, we measure fabric durability using the awesomely named Wyzenbeek Double Rub Test. You can learn more about that elsewhere on our site. But, you're gonna want a fabric that's at a higher end of the durability range. That just means that it's not gonna break down with heavy wear, if you have kids jumping up and down on it, or doing whatever. They're always so creative, they come up with such innovative ways of destroying your home. I think you're going to definitely benefit from something that's pretty tough wearing, in that sense. Fabrics that do not pill, also very beneficial, because pilling again with wear, it's one of those things that's just kind of annoying. It's not necessarily a failure of the fabric, but you have to kind of clean them off. You can use a fabric shaver, or a lint shaver, to take a, who wants to do that? Go with a fabric that's pilling resistant that's going to be a little bit better for you, as well.

And then finally the big one is stain resistance. You can get around to stain resistance a few different ways. Sometimes it's the composition of the fiber itself that gives it sort of a natural stain resistance. That's where we get into solution dyed products, like Sunbrella, Brelladura, a few other companies that are out there. They're typically acrylics or a polyolefin of some form. The color is built into the fiber of the fabric, so that gives it its stain resistance, basically because it's not gonna absorb fluids, liquids, stains, and you can use kind of anything to clean it without causing discoloration. That's how that one works. The other stuff that's more popular and I think probably better for most folks because of the feel and quality and luxury to it, is going to be something that receives a coating. I think we're used to probably in the old world, spray on coatings of varying types. You hear of scotch guard and stuff like that, and that always kinda worked, sort of, not great, didn't last very long. Sometimes it would change the feel of the fabric. Not preferable. But what they do now in higher end textile mills, is they actually do a submersion process. So once the fabric is made, it's run through sort of this, it's dipped and then baked in a way. I don't exactly know how it works, but ultimately what you get is this almost inperceptable cutting that gives it excellent stain resistance, it coats the fibers, prevents them from absorbing fluids and liquids and all that stuff. And you can use a wider range of cleaning products on it without again causing discoloration or other damage. So, really nice, makes it wipeable, makes it easy to clean, but doesn't really mean you're compromising all that much.

We've got some amazing options that are really competitive price point. They just have a lot to offer and I think, overall, it's going to be the best bet for your kids. Hey, thanks so much for watching our video. We've got a whole lot of other videos on similar topics related to furniture and design, so I hope you do check those out, maybe subscribe to our channel, hop over to our website. And if you have any questions, give us a ring. We'll be happy to answer any questions you can throw out at us.