A Year of Textured Softness: Fabrics You Loved in 2021

2021 was a year that taught us much about ourselves, our resilience, and what’s most important in our private and professional lives. It was a year of making more careful decisions about how we want to live our lives, and of looking forward to the future.

We’ve seen this reflected in the tactile qualities of our best-selling fabric collections in 2021, to the point that we’ve never had a ‘softer’ year!

Today we’re sharing our discoveries with you with a world of luscious images to indulge your gentler side. Ready to get touchy-feely?

Velvety soft, cuddly textures

Velvet really is the height of decadent comfort. Its plush pile is captivating, and that luxurious deep nap will always be in demand.

There are some extra special qualities about the different velvet FibreGuard fabrics that have been so popular this year. It’s been our special textured velvets that you have found so inviting, from a chenille multipurpose fabric collection with a strie stripe that feels like a micro velvet, to a velvet upholstery with a distinctive nailhead texture that gives it a wonderful dimension.

The way one looks at things is of the utmost importance. Seeing is feeling with the eyes. – Axel Vervoordt

Unlike all other velvet upholstery and drapery fabrics on the market, FibreGuard’s easy clean velvet fabrics are unmistakably low maintenance. Like all of our fabric qualities, accidental stains are easily cleaned from our velvet fabrics.

All accidental stains can be removed from FibreGuard fabrics using only water: even our velvets! Yes, even chocolate, pizza grease, ball pen and red wine. Should you have a tougher stain, a small amount of standard, white, household soap, can be used.

Visit our How To Clean hub page for all the help you need to freshen up. Keep in mind that immediate stain removal will ensure the best result.

Related read: Design is life - a chat with our design director, Didier Pické >

Textured fabrics with natural appeal

2021 was the year you brought nature inside with you! From a FibreGuard perspective, we’ve seen this specifically with those textured fabric collections that have an extra special something when it comes to their composition.

We’re talking, of course, about distinctive natural aspects.

Among your FibreGuard favourites were multipurpose fabric collections blending the durability of polyester with the welcoming feel of cotton. Cotton lends our easy clean fabrics such a lovely tactile quality that spans from a micro-emerised brushed cotton touch all the way to a dry, matte, linen look and feel.

Chunky multi-colour bouclé

Bouclé is a fabric woven from yarns with a loopy, coiled-up quality. Early on in 2020, Architectural Digest declared that ‘Bouclé Fabric Is Back’ and we have a feeling you loved that article because our FibreGuard bouclé fabrics have been more in demand than ever before.

“We are living in a time when comfort and safety are the utmost importance,” says designer Tina Ramchandani. “With very real issues concerning the environment and political climate, days are hectic. So creating a safe and cozy space at home that encourages well-being is essential.”

Designers have been upholstering textured bouclés on modern sofa forms with rounded, organic aesthetics. Our easy clean bouclé fabrics that peaked in 2021 include beautiful yarn-dyed upholstery collections that feels so nice they could be chenille, and a third collection that also doesn’t have the sometimes-rough sense of a bouclé but, thanks to the melange of yarns in it, has a soft, friendly hand-feel.

Related read: What sustainable comfort means to us

Chenille-texture mix

To round off our textural tour of your 2021 fabric favourites we’re diving into the cloudy soft world of chenille texture mixes.

Collections you loved featured chenille fabrics combining different four fabric compositions (cotton, polyester, viscose and linen) and deep, rich, unforgettable colours.

Easy clean fabrics, Woven To Protect

FibreGuard fabrics are engineered from the inside out to perform, so no wonder they’re easy on the hands (and eyes). Find out what our dedication to technical excellence can do for your project by getting in touch with us today.