What do I do with all these fabric swatches?

Hi there, I'm Chris from Roger + Chris. And I'm here today to answer an important question. What do I do with all these fabric swatches I just ordered?

Alright, here's the deal. We have hundreds and hundreds of fabric swatches available on our site, you've probably ordered a few of them by now. Hopefully, they've showed up in the mail. You opened up your packet and you got a bunch of fabric. What do you do with it and how do you figure out what you want?

Alright, first of all. Hopefully, you started off with a sense of the look you're going for, the color that you want. So start with the aesthetics, start with the color. See what works in the room that you're in. It's really important to look at the fabric in the light of the room that the furniture is going into because the color of the walls, and I've got a green wall behind me. That will inform the representation of the colors of anything else that I put in this room. It's just the way it works. So, keep that in mind. Now if you're in the processing of remodeling or repainting, you have to kinda do a little bit of thought on that. But generally speaking, we're looking at the sunlight that's coming into the room. Is it a dark room, is it a bright room? When are you gonna be using, what time of day? Think about that a little bit, look at it at different times of day to get a sense of how those colors are gonna respond.

Texture I think is another important thing. And gosh, texture with fabric is just such a personal preference. Some people are looking for something that's just ultra soft, some people want something that's a little bit less so. Maybe from a durability perspective or they just aren't really looking for anything that feels too much like an old flannel shirt. So, your personal preference is really gonna guide that. I don't have a huge opinion on that, I think it's really gonna be determined by you.

There are certain styles of furniture that work better than others with certain types of fabric, I think. Some fabrics are gonna read a little bit more formal, some will be more casual. And that kinda then matches up to the formality and the informality of the style of furniture, as well. There are no hard and fast rules for that though, in design. So I don't think you have to feel like, well this is a really kind of casual, contemporary fabric and I'm putting it on a Chesterfield, you know what? I've seen that done and it's beautiful. So, I don't think it's the end of the world. I think go with what you like. You're gonna be sitting on it and lying down on it for years, go with what you personally like. The only rule is that you have to like it.

Okay, let's talk about durability. Now, we have durability ratings on our site and I think you can trust those. I think those are gonna be very informative for you and really they'll save you time. If you're trying to compare five different fabrics and you just look at the little dot range on our site, the one with the most dots is gonna be the most stain resistant. End of story. You don't really have to test it yourself. But, we have a lot of folks who go to town on these things and I'm kind of in favor of that. Because even if you do choose a stain resistant fabric, I think it's important for you to have an understanding what that really means. Like, what the actual ramifications of that. So, grab some ketchup, grab a, have fun with wine. Drop a little bit on the fabrics and try wiping it off and see how it works. Try spraying some cleaning products on it and see what it does. That's gonna give you a sense of realistically what we're working with here. Because in the end when you do get that sofa into your home, I think you're gonna wanna have a sense of like, okay how fast do I have to jump on this if I wanna clean this up and get it out? How much leeway do I have to let it sit on there or what kind of cleaning products are gonna work?

Now again, feel free to ask us. We'll be able to provide you guidance. We have good relationships with all of our textile mills. They're definitely gonna be experts on it. And if there's anything we don't know, they will. And we can always pass that information on to you. So, but yeah. Play with the swatches, see what they do. And I think that'll give you a really good sense of what you're dealing with.