At The Footstool Workshop, we accept Customer’s Own Fabric (COM) for upholstering onto your footstool.
There are a few things we must do, by law, to ensure your safety to comply with current fire safety legislation.
A footstool, just like a sofa, is a fixed upholstered item. Therefore, certain steps must be taken to find out what your fabrics composition is prior to transforming it into something beautiful.
Some fabrics for upholstery can be ordered pre-treated or bought as a ‘Fire retardant’ (FR) version. This is always preferable, and, we will ask you to send us a copy of the accompanying certificate before manufacture.
However, this is not always possible and so here is a brief explanation of the different treatments that may need consideration depending on which fabric you choose to send us.
Enjoy peace of mind – you’re footstool will be completely compliant with UK legislation
Inherently Fire Proof Fabrics
Virgin wool is fire retardant by nature. 100% wool fabric does not need treatment to make it comply. Good news if you are a sheep!
Flame proofing options.
Usually, there are two ways to deal with this issue for footstools being used in a domestic environment (your own home). Both depend very much on what your material is made of.
Interliner/barrier cloth
If your fabric is made of more than 75% natural fibres (cotton, linen, viscose etc) then we can use an interliner between your fabric and the footstool to make it comply. Interliner charges vary by size of footstool from £49 to £69.
Back coating
If your fabric is made of less than 75% natural fibres then it will need specialist treatment to make it flame proof.
This need not be a daunting procedure – we can handle it for you. We use a trusted third party to do this for us. The process is called back coating. The back of your fabric is passed over a bath of fire proofing solution and is dried. The treatment plant then returns it to us along with the certificates needed and we can then start work. Usually, back coating can add 10 to 14 days to our lead time. Fire proofing treatment costs £15 per metre of fabric plus a £30.00 administration fee. This covers shipping to the treatment centre and your fabric’s return to us.
Remember, it is the law. Your safety is paramount to us and together with the certification provided, gives peace of mind. If you’re not sure what the composition of your fabric is, we will often ask for it to be back coated. This is in order to make absolutely certain you are safe and that we are compliant.
How we will contact you
If we need any guidance or information about your fabric, or if we need to ask you to sign off on whichever option is relevant to your material, we will email or call you to discuss it with you when we receive your fabric and it has been assessed by our workshop team.
We will then proceed with whichever course of action needs to be taken in order to satisfy our responsibility for your safety.
For commercial premises
If you are buying footstools for a commercial property – a hotel or similar, then the laws are more stringent, and your fabric must meet Crib 5 standard.
We carry Crib 5 interliner at our workshop and we can give you free, friendly advice to help you. Please contact us for more information.
And finally, if you’d like to select one of our fabrics, you can rest assured you are buying with confidence. The fabrics offered on our website are already FR treated.
Take a look at our fabric samples and order some. Likewise, please do contact us to discuss a wider range of colours and textures of fabrics than we currently run on our site. We have a brilliant selection of materials suited to commercial and trade projects as well as for domestic usage.
