Architectural textiles for interiors: how to choose high-end fabric for walls, ceilings and curtains

What makes a fabric architectural?

A fabric becomes architectural when it is specified like a finish: drawn on the plans, tested for the place it goes, and built into the walls, ceilings, windows and partitions of a room. It is chosen for its surface, like stone or timber: the geometric relief of Cubic Pico or the voluminous surface of Volumic Bubble can set the character of a whole room.

The phrase also has another meaning. Architectural fabric structures, or tensile membranes, are coated membranes tensioned over steel frames to make roofs and shade structures. This guide is about textiles inside buildings.

Whether you start from designer fabrics for interiors or from an acoustic range, a fabric used as a finish in a commercial building needs the test documents a certifier and a facilities team will ask for. What contract fabric means sets out those documents.

How do you choose for texture, relief and light?

Start with the surface you want to make. A relief fabric changes with light and distance: low light draws out its shadows, and the scale of the relief decides whether it reads as texture or as pattern. What a 3D woven fabric is describes the surfaces of the Acunic ranges, and designing a textured wall or ceiling covers viewing distance, set-out, joints and lighting.

What fire evidence does a fabric need?

In Australia, the fire evidence for a fabric lining is its Group Number, and the National Construction Code sets which Groups each location in a building may use. Fire ratings for fabric in Australia explains the Groups and the evidence to ask for.

Curtains are mostly exempt from these rules, with two exceptions that whether curtains need a fire rating sets out.

Acunic is woven from Trevira CS, whose flame retardancy belongs to the fibre itself, while the finished fabric's fire rating is its Group Number, as what Trevira CS is explains.

In New Zealand, the Building Product Specifications of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) convert an AS 5637.1 Group Number to the New Zealand Group Number directly (Table 8.5.3.1B), and a rating with the "-S" smoke suffix also needs a smoke growth rate index of not more than 100.

AKA Acoustics' Technical Product Summary (Version A, October 2024) lists Cubic Pico, Accentric Crash, Accentric Crinkle, Accentric Soundwave and Optic Braid as Group 1, and the other Acunic articles as Group 2. AKA Acoustics' Technical Product Summary gives each Group Number with its source.

How does fabric change the sound of a room?

Fabric absorbs part of the sound that reaches it, which shortens the room's reverberation. Keeping sound from passing into the next room is a separate job, done by walls, floors and doors; absorption and sound insulation compared explains the difference.

Read every absorption figure with the construction it was measured in. How to read NRC, α_w and absorption class shows how the ratings work and how to compare them.

Where can fabric go: walls, ceilings, curtains and partitions?

Each place uses fabric in a different construction, and each has its own guide.

• Walls: framed panels, where what sits in the cavity behind the fabric matters. See fabric wall panels in Acunic and what the frame and infill do.
• Ceilings: suspended sails, useful where walls are glazed or busy. See ceiling sails in Acunic and fabric ceiling sails and acoustic clouds.
• Windows and openings: gathered curtains, where how full they hang and how far they sit from the glass both count. See curtains in Acunic and acoustic curtains: fullness, air gap and fabric.
• Open rooms: freestanding dividers, desk screens and towers. See partitions in Acunic and fabric room dividers and partitions.

Which fabric suits a hotel, restaurant or care building?

Each building type pairs a look with its own lining rules and care routine. Fabric for hotels works from the lobby to the ballroom, space by space. Fabric for restaurants and bars shows where fabric goes in a loud dining room. Fabric for aged care and healthcare covers the stricter lining rules and the cleaning questions in care buildings.

What should you read on a data sheet?

Read the width and its tolerance, the weight and thickness, the Martindale abrasion figure, light fastness, specific flow resistance and care, and check that every absorption figure names its mounting. How to specify an architectural fabric turns those values into a specification checklist and clause wording.

Colour, minimums and samples

Beyond the standard off-white, black and beige, Acunic can be dyed to order or UV printed, and custom colour, dyeing and UV printing covers minimums and what changes in colour. Samples are the way to judge a relief before you commit: request them on the samples page, where AKA Acoustics will contact you to confirm the request before samples are sent, and use how to judge fabric samples to view them in place.

Care and sustainability

Care differs between articles, most simply between the non-washable Cubic fabrics and the rest; how to clean architectural fabric gives each article's care.

Sustainability questions to ask of a fabric covers what Acunic is made of, Getzner's take-back system and the evidence for a rating submission.

The Acunic range in brief

Getzner Textil AG of Bludenz, Austria, makes the Acunic fabrics, and Acunic is distributed in Australia, New Zealand and Asia by AKA Acoustics. The ranges compare as follows in weight, width and the mounting Getzner used for each acoustic test on its datasheets.

Optic Structure and Accentric Crash are the fabrics Getzner uses for its made-to-measure acunic curtain, and every fabric page carries its datasheet and fire evidence. Acunic questions answered covers the range, the maker and the distributor in one place.