Fabric Update: What We Use in Our Wheelchairs (and What We're Testing Next)
- Esa Rajala
- Aug 16
- 6 min read
Upholstery doesn't get much attention until something goes wrong with it. A seam that gives way after two years, a fabric that fades in the sun, a surface that never quite comes clean after a spilled coffee — that's when people start asking what's actually inside the cushion they sit on eight hours a day. So we thought it was worth writing this down properly: what fabric standards actually require, what we currently use, and what we're testing to replace it.
Why wheelchair fabric isn't just fabric
A sofa cushion and a wheelchair seat look similar, but they live very different lives. A wheelchair seat gets sat on daily, for years, often by someone who can't shift their weight easily to relieve pressure. It gets wiped down with disinfectant, sometimes several times a day in care settings. It sits in direct sun through a car window or a south-facing porch. And if something goes wrong — a fire, a crash, a fall — the seat isn't a piece of furniture anymore, it's a piece of safety equipment.
That's why upholstery for mobility products is expected to meet a different bar than home furnishing fabric, even though the two can look identical on a swatch card. Several standards come into play, and it's worth understanding what each one is actually checking for.
Fire safety. Upholstered furniture in Europe is generally tested under EN 1021-1 and EN 1021-2, which check how a fabric and its filling respond to a smouldering cigarette and to a small open flame. The idea isn't that the fabric won't burn at all — almost nothing is fireproof — but that it won't ignite easily from an everyday ember or a dropped match, and that it won't produce fast-spreading flame if it does catch. For a chair someone can't quickly get out of, this matters more than it does for a living room sofa.
Abrasion resistance. This is measured with something called the Martindale test, where a sample of fabric is rubbed against an abrasive surface in a figure-eight motion, over and over, until it visibly wears through. Results are reported in "rub counts" — tens of thousands of cycles for a fabric meant for light domestic use, and often well over 100,000 for anything rated for heavy contract or medical use. A wheelchair seat, being sat on and shifted against daily for years, needs to sit at the high end of that scale.
Colorfastness. Fabric is also tested for how well its color holds up — both to rubbing (EN ISO 105-X12) and to light exposure (EN ISO 105-B02). A fabric that looks great in the showroom but fades to a patchy grey after a summer by a window isn't doing its job, and colorfastness testing is what catches that before the fabric ever reaches a customer.
Cleanability and hydrolysis resistance. Because wheelchair upholstery gets disinfected
far more often than household furniture, the coating on the fabric — often a PU (polyurethane) layer — needs to resist breaking down under repeated contact with cleaning agents and moisture. This is where hydrolysis resistance comes in: over time, humidity and chemical exposure can cause a PU coating to go sticky, crack, or peel. A fabric that fails this quietly, months or years after purchase, is one of the most common complaints in the mobility equipment world — and one of the hardest to predict just by looking at a sample.
Biocompatibility. Since the fabric is in constant skin contact, there's also an expectation — often assessed under the broader EN ISO 10993 framework used for medical devices — that it won't irritate skin or contain substances that shouldn't be there. This overlaps with the wider regulatory framework our chairs fall under as Class I medical devices under MDR 2017/745.
Seam and structural strength. Finally, the fabric doesn't work alone — it's only as good as the stitching holding it to the frame. Seam strength testing checks that the upholstery won't split under the kind of repeated load and shifting a seat sees over years of daily use.
None of these tests are things a customer can check by touching a swatch in a showroom. They're the invisible part of the decision, which is exactly why we think it's worth explaining rather than assuming people take it on faith.
The fabric we've used for years
With that context, here's where our own fabric stands. The chenille-style upholstery we've used for years passed the bar above when it was first approved for wheelchair use, and it's held up well since — easy to wipe clean, resistant to the kind of daily wear a seat like this takes, and it doesn't feel like a "medical" fabric, which matters more to people than it might sound like it should.
The problem isn't the fabric's performance. It's supply. Our main colorway is being discontinued upstream, by the mill that weaves it, and there's nothing we can do about that from our end. Right now, we still have stock in red and blue, and those will keep going out on chairs until they run out. But once they're gone, that's it for this fabric — which is why we've spent the past several months testing what comes next.
Testing a new grey
The fabric currently on trial is a different construction entirely — a tighter, more technical weave, closer to a performance textile than the soft chenille we're used to. On paper it looks like a strong candidate: good abrasion numbers, a coating built for repeated cleaning, and a texture that reads as more rugged, which suits the kind of terrain these chairs actually go over.
But paper specifications only tell part of the story, which is why it's currently mounted on real test chairs rather than just sitting in a sample book. We're watching how it behaves under actual daily use — how it wears where the frame flexes, how it takes repeated wiping, whether the color holds after weeks outdoors. A fabric can pass every lab test and still disappoint in the field if the weave catches on clothing or the coating feels wrong under a hand. So far, the early signs are good. But we'd rather take an extra season to be sure than switch a core material and find out about a problem from a customer instead of a test chair.
Looking for a second color
Losing our old colorway also means losing the choice that came with it — for a while, red and blue have effectively been the only options left in stock, and once those run out, a single grey isn't much of a color range. So alongside testing the grey itself, we've been going through a full supplier swatch book to find a second color to sit next to it: neutrals, blues, greens, and a few warmer tones like orange, all from fabrics that meet the same standards described above.
Nothing here is decided yet. This is genuinely the stage where feedback is useful — if there's a color people are hoping we land on, or one they'd steer us away from, now is the moment that actually changes the outcome.
An experiment on the side: full PU-leather cushions
Separate from the fabric search, we also built a set of cushions entirely out of the PU-leather we normally only use on the side panels, rather than mixing it with fabric on the main seating surfaces. It's a different look — an all-black chair with a cleaner, more industrial feel — and a practical difference too: PU-leather wipes down even faster than the woven fabrics above, with no weave to trap dirt or moisture.
It's not a standard option yet, and we're not promising it will become one. But the early impressions from testing have been good enough that it's worth mentioning here rather than quietly shelving it.
Where this leaves things
To be clear: nothing changes on your chair today. If you've already got one of ours in the current fabric, it stays exactly as it is, and we'll keep supplying red and blue for as long as stock allows. This post is really about being upfront while a decision is still being made, rather than announcing a change after the fact.
If you've got a preference between the new grey, the color options we're weighing, or the full-leather look — tell us. This is one of the few decisions in a product like this where a customer's opinion can still shape the outcome before it's locked in.
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