Our Selection of Standard Fabrics

Church Pew Upholstery/New Pews

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Our Selection of Upgrade Fabrics Begins Here with Level 2

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Our Selection of Upgrade Fabrics Continues Here with Level 3

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Choosing a fabric color:

It looks like you are on the first step already, which is looking through the patterns and colors of fabrics on our website. This can be overwhelming. It helps to have color choices narrowed down before beginning your search, but also have an open mind because a certain pattern or color may catch your eye.  Many churches begin with their carpet choice because there are often more fabrics to choose from than carpet samples. On our pew upholstery fabric pages, there is a form where you can send us patterns and colors and we can have 8 x 10 samples mailed to you. We also travel to churches with sample pews, chairs, and/or theater seats and always have a box of fabrics for you and your committee to browse through. We have 4 levels of pew upholstery fabric, and we travel with hundreds of patterns and colors for you to choose from. If you are a member of a church that requires a vote by the entire congregation, we have found it is helpful to narrow choices down to 1-3 to present. Lastly, have confidence- your church is going to be beautiful!

Judging a fabrics’ durability:

The number one question we get from committees is “How durable is the fabric?”  Abrasion testing is quantified by double rubs. Basically, this is the laboratory’s way of determining the durability of a fabric. They place the fabric on a machine that rubs another piece of fabric, typically cotton, against the fabric to be tested. The machine rubs the fabric together over and over, and when wear is detected, that becomes the fabric’s double-rub rating. We have fabrics that range from 80,000 double rubs to 1,000,000 double rubs. So, the higher the number, the more durable the fabric. 50,000 double rubs is the typical cutoff for fabrics to be classified as commercial instead of residential. Commercial fabrics are intended for hospitality use, such as hotel furniture, hospital waiting rooms, airports, and other high traffic areas. Almost all commercial applications get more traffic than a typical church, making any of these fabrics suitable for churches to use as pew upholstery fabric.

Many churches we serve have windows allowing direct sunlight onto the pews. Sun is the number one enemy of fabrics. If your church has direct sunlight, our first advice would be to tint the windows, but you also need to pay particularly close attention to the light fastness of your fabric. Light fastness is measured in hours. The testing laboratory puts direct UV light onto a fabric, and once fading begins, they turn the light off. The number of hours before fading gives the fabrics the light fastness rating.

All of the pew upholstery fabrics we offer come with a standard soil release coating (making them stain resistant) and come with a heavy acrylic backing that holds the weave together and prevents the fabric from stretching.  In addition, there are additional coatings you can have added to fabrics, covering everything from anti-microbial to water resistance.

Despite the words and numbers we use to describe our fabrics, every pew upholstery fabric we use is commercial grade, and is durable. Throughout the years, we have eliminated fabrics that do not work well with pews. You can be confident that any fabric you choose from us will look great on pews and will last for many years.

 Patterns:

Traditionally, churches had solid fabrics only, but over the years, patterned fabrics have become a more popular choice for church pews. A common response when showing patterns is “that is too busy”. When looking at patterned fabric, it is always a good idea to look at them close up, but then also lay it on the pew and stand back to look. Many pew upholstery fabrics with small prints pull different colors up close than they do even a few steps back, and some patterned fabrics look totally different from a distance. For instance, a fabric up close may have both blue and red threads visible, but from a distance, it looks purple. Or, we have several fabrics with diamond patterns with small dots in the middle. Up close the color on the dot is extremely visible, but when you stand back, it disappears completely. A word of caution would be not to match fabric and carpet based on tiny details on prints without standing back and looking from a distance.

Every once in a while, we get a church that asks if they can use a custom pew upholstery fabric. The short answer is yes. Here is some guidance. Make sure the fabric has a high enough double rub rating to be considered commercial. Also, we recommend getting the fabric coated as described above. Though we love patterns on church pew upholstery, we highly recommend you steer clear of stripes. Even if the stripes look perfectly straight when pews or pew upholstery is new, it is likely, over time, foam will lose density, and stripes will sag or shift.

Because of the volume of fabric we order directly from the mills, our pricing is much better than what an individual church would get, even from a fabric wholesaler. We offer hundreds of patterns; we recommend looking at the website first. If you do not find any you love, call us. We have more!

Church Pew Upholstery Over the Years:

Traditionally, church pews were all solid wood. In the 1950’s and 60’s, factories began producing upholstered pews. When pews first started being upholstered, most churches chose fabrics that were red. In the 1970’s the trend transitioned to oranges and greens, like much of the shag carpet and appliances our grandparents tore out of their homes years ago.  Mauve was the popular color of the 1990’s, and we spend a good amount of time tearing mauve fabrics off pews today.  The last few years, we saw a huge upswing in grey pew upholstery fabrics for both new church pews and re-upholstery. Fabric mills varied grey colors and patterns in commercial fabrics, and we now have dozens of grey fabrics in solids and patterns for church pew upholstery. Today, churches still choose reds, purples, blues, greens, and greys, but we are seeing an increase in churches choosing shades of tan.  https://abseconmills.com/pattern-gallery.  https://www.tahoefabrics.com/