Sustainable choice for the customer! – Choosing the right fabric…

At NC Nordic Care, it is the customer himself who chooses fabrics for his furniture. This is great, considering that the customer can choose a fabric adapted for a specific use and in the color and texture desired. We hope that this will help to keep the furniture in a good shape and will be used for a long time. We offer a variety of fabrics with different characteristics such as washable, wipeable and tolerant. All in order for the customers to choose something that fits their specific purpose!

But when it comes to fabrics, the choice should not end in appearance and characteristics. The textile industry is unfortunately extremely chemically intensive with potentially very high environmental impact. Horrible images have been shown from textile factories in terms of social conditions. Major deficiencies in the working environment have been demonstrated and many workers lack just working conditions. This makes it all the more important to make another choice when buying a furniture with fabric.

Malin Hansson, Head of Marketing at NC and responsible for our fabrics, makes these choices daily and know a lot about the selection of fabrics.

Malin, what should our costumers think about when choosing fabrics for a furniture?

There are many questions that should be concidered, for example. What environment should the furniture be in? Are there special hygiene requirements? Will there be severe wear and tear? Is the fabric environmentally labelled? How does it harmonize with other furniture in the environment? These questions are a good start.

What challenges do you see when it comes to choosing fabric?

When choosing fabrics for our showroom and fairs, my challenge is to get the viewer to feel the same feeling of the furniture that I want to mediate. It’s fun that the same furniture can get as completely different expression depending on the fabric it’s wearing. I’m also trying to think about choosing fabrics that have low climate impact. There are also fabrics made of recycled materials that feel good to choose for the future.

How do you think the future looks like when it comes to fabrics? Do you see any trends? What are you hoping that the future will bring?

I think and hope that sustainability and natural materials will be prioritized higher than synthetic materials. The trend is clearly more natural dyes and less chemicals, and developing new weaving techniques that make the structure feel new. Weaving techniques can already contribute to fabric properties like bumping off liquid and getting the fabric flame resistant, within this field it is certainly going to happen more in the future. I also hope that Care facilities can use wool instead of plastic mateiral in the future as it actually has the property to clean itself. Obviously, there are problems with resistant bacteria and that you need to be able to disinfect furniture, etc. but my hope is that you can sit in a furniture that delivers a warming feeling, which synthetics does not contribute to. Perhaps there is fabric in the future that breaks down dirt and all bacteria, that would be amazing!

Thank you Malin for this positive vision for the future! We can only keep our fingers crossed and continue to work to make the fabric industry even better and more sustainable. For us at NC, it is important to be able to offer fabrics which we know what they contain and that contribute to a more sustainable industry. Therefore, we offer fabrics that meet the requirements of the sustainability label Möbelfakta, which involves environmental, quality and social responsibility. We also have fabrics marked with EU Ecolabel and Oeko-tex. These three labels are a good proof that the fabric has been checked in one way or another and they could make the choice of fabric a little easier. Would you like to know more about what the different labels mean? Follow the links or contact me and I’ll tell you more!

Lisa Hansson,
Environmental and Quality coordinator
lisa.h@ncnordiccare.se