Romo Fabrics: A Quality Inspector's Six-Point Checklist Before You Order Yardage

I work in quality at Romo. That means every fabric and wallcovering that goes out into the world passes my desk first—roughly 250 new items a year and every reorder on top of that. In our Q1 2024 quality audit, I rejected 9% of first deliveries, and most of those failures were the same quiet issue: dye-lot variance. Nothing looked wrong in a photograph. Everything looked wrong next to last year's cushion.

This checklist is the one I wish someone had handed me before I placed my first large order. It's six checks. Do them in order: define the job, read the fibre, test the light, check the lot, see the scale, do the math. Then, optionally, thank me later.

Check 1: Define the Job Before You Define the Fabric

A curtain and a banquette have opposite jobs, and fabrics fail when those jobs get confused. The test that matters for upholstery is abrasion—how many rubs before the threads start to break. The standard industry tests are Wyzenbeek (ASTM D4157) and Martindale (ISO 12947-2). Here's where I set the floor for what we sell:

• Contract seating (hotels, restaurants, offices): 30,000+ Wyzenbeek double rubs or 40,000+ Martindale cycles.
• Residential seating: 15,000+ Wyzenbeek or 20,000+ Martindale is a sensible floor for a family living room.
• Drapery and wallcovering: abrasion is nearly irrelevant. Lightfastness is what matters, and I'll get to that.

If you hear "hospitality-grade" and the datasheet doesn't list a rub count, treat the phrase as decoration. It's not a specification; it's an adjective.

Check 2: Read the Fibre Content Like a Skeptic

Two search terms land on our site constantly: liberty silk fabric and linen jersey fabric. Both are perfect examples of why the name on the order form tells you less than the fibre content underneath it.

Silk. When someone searches for liberty silk fabric, they're usually picturing that distinctly English printed silk—precise, luminous, almost liquid in the way it takes a pattern. Liberty of London has been making that kind of silk famous since 1875, and for good reason: silk is a natural protein fibre that absorbs dye with a depth synthetics struggle to replicate. But silk also hates direct sunlight. If it's going anywhere near a window, line it or filter the UV. And read the composition: a silk/viscose blend is stronger and cheaper, but it drapes and wears differently from the pure mulberry thing.

Linen jersey. This one confuses everyone, because "jersey" describes a knit structure while linen is a plant fibre with almost no natural stretch. So a linen jersey fabric gets its give from the knit, not from the linen. What you need to check before you cut into it:

• Is there elastane in the blend, and what percentage? Two or three percent makes a real difference to recovery.
• What's the weight? A 220 gsm knit behaves completely differently from a 140 gsm knit.
• Does it recover after stretch? Fold a sample in your hand for ten seconds, let it go, and see if it snaps back. The ones that stay stretched will bag at the elbows and seat over time.

That last point is the kind of thing you can only learn from a physical sample. Which, conveniently, is check five.

Check 3: Run the Sun Test

Light is the slow killer of textiles. We test colourfastness to light per AATCC 16.3 and require a rating of 4 or better on the 1–5 scale for interior fabrics. For anything going outdoors, I want a solution-dyed yarn and the highest lightfastness rating the mill will put in writing.

This is also where I answer the search term we get more than almost any other: best sunbrella fabric for outdoor furniture. Sunbrella is a genuine benchmark in outdoor textiles, and it earned that position. Its acrylic yarns are solution-dyed—the colour runs through the entire fibre, not just the surface—which is exactly why it survives UV and harsh cleaning without turning into a washed-out version of itself.

But "best" is not a specification. Put any outdoor fabric, including Romo's own outdoor collection, through the same five checks:

1. Solution-dyed yarn? Colour baked into the fibre, not printed on top of it.
2. Lightfastness rating stated? An actual number, not "excellent."
3. Mildew and moisture resistance documented? And note: this is not waterproof. More on that below.
4. Abrasion rated? If it's going on seating, the rub count still applies.
5. Cleaning instructions explicit? Including whether diluted bleach is acceptable.

Run those five checks on any outdoor textile and you've answered the "best" question yourself. The label on the selvedge is a shortcut, not the answer.

Check 4: Order Two Cuttings from Different Dye Lots

Here's the step almost nobody does, and the one that saves the most expensive phone calls: request two samples from two different dye lots.

Fabric is dyed in batches. Even in the same colourway, a roll from June and a roll from October can sit 2–3 ΔE apart—technically within tolerance, visibly different when they meet on one sofa. I once placed a reorder for "warm white." The mill heard "close enough." Result: a living room where every white cushion had to be re-covered, because side-by-side, the old white and the new white were two entirely different moods.

Looking back, I should have ordered the double cutting. At the time, the deadline was tight and one sample seemed sufficient. Now the double-cutting rule is in every project brief I touch, and in 2024 it caught four reorders before they shipped.

If a supplier can't or won't send cuttings from two different batches, that's information too. It usually means they don't test their own consistency.

Check 5: Use the Website for Research, Not for Commitment

The romo fabrics website is a genuinely useful research tool—filter by colour, usage, collection, and composition; check the technical tab for rub counts, widths, weights, and pattern repeats. It's the fastest way to narrow forty options down to four.

But the screen lies about two things: scale and hand. A motif that reads as an elegant all-over print in a photo might be the size of a dinner plate in real life. And no image can tell you whether a fabric feels like the best velvet you've ever touched (which, honestly, some of ours do) or like something you'd never want against bare skin.

A designer I know skipped an $18 sample cutting once, reasoning that the swatch was "obviously" right. That $18 turned into $1,900 of rework when the subtle geometric pattern—which had looked subtle on a laptop—placed a full-scale flower dead centre on every seat cushion, and nothing matched across the seams. The sample was the cheapest part of that project. It always is.

Check 6: Do the Pattern Math and Read the Fine Print

Pattern repeat is the number that quietly ruins budgets. Here's the simple version. If your curtain drop is 240 cm and the fabric's pattern repeat is 64 cm, divide 240 by 64. That's 3.75 repeats. You can't order 3.75 repeats of a pattern, so you round up to 4, which is 256 cm per drop. That's 16 cm of pattern waste per drop, and across four drops it's more than a full repeat of fabric you're paying for and cutting off.

One-way patterns and napped fabrics make it worse: every piece has to be laid in the same direction, which changes the layout and increases the yardage. A good workroom will ask about this before cutting. A bad one won't, and the difference shows up at the seams.

Then the fine print. For contract or hospitality work, fire codes are non-negotiable. In the US, drapery is commonly tested to NFPA 701 and upholstery to CAL TB 117-2013. In the UK and EU, the relevant standards differ. What I insist on is simple: if the job needs a fire certificate, ask for it before the order, not after the inspector shows up. Specifications change and standards get revised, so verify current requirements at the official source for the region your project is in.

The Four Mistakes I See Over and Over

1. Buying from a screen. Somewhere, today, someone is approving a five-figure upholstery order without having touched the fabric. Don't be that order. A sample is the cheapest insurance in the industry.
2. Confusing "outdoor" with "waterproof." Outdoor fabrics are engineered to resist UV, mildew, and staining. They are not tarpaulins. If a cushion sits in standing water, the construction of the cushion—not just the cover—has to handle the moisture.
3. Skipping the dye-lot check. I can't say this enough. Two cuttings cost next to nothing. A room full of mismatched fabric costs real money and real time.
4. Asking "which brand is best" instead of "which specification fits." Brand trust gets you a shortlist. The specification gets you a pass. When someone asks me about the best sunbrella fabric for outdoor furniture, my answer is the same as when they ask about ours: put the numbers on paper, and let the numbers decide.

An informed client is the easiest client in the world to work with. I'd rather spend ten minutes explaining dye lots than reorder a room of fabric later. Knowing what you're buying isn't a luxury. It's the point.