How Hydrotex and Cloudshield work

Most fabric fails in the first ten seconds

Something goes over. Someone reaches for a tissue. By the time they get back, the liquid has already moved: sideways across the surface, then down into the gaps between the threads. What you wipe at that point is the top of a stain that is already three layers deep.

That first ten seconds is the whole problem, and it is what both our fabrics are built to interrupt.

One barrier, two cloths

Hydrotex™ and Cloudshield™ are not the same material under two names. They are genuinely different cloth. Hydrotex™ is the smooth one, close-woven and velvet-like in the hand. Cloudshield™ is a corduroy, ribbed, with visible vertical wales running down it. Put them side by side and you can tell them apart by touch with your eyes closed.

Pet friendly is the weave. The barrier is the finish.

These are two different things, and it is worth keeping them apart, because a sofa can have one without the other.

Pet friendliness comes from the weave. Both Hydrotex™ and Cloud Weave are woven tight, so hair lifts off instead of working its way in, and a claw finds much less to catch on. Every fabric on this page has that.

The barrier is a separate job, and it is about liquid. It is a finish on the fibre, and only Hydrotex™ and Cloudshield™ carry it. So a Cloud Weave sofa is genuinely good with pets and genuinely has no liquid barrier. Both are true at the same time, and anyone who tells you the two always come together is selling you something.

What they share is the finish on the fibre. Both are treated so the thread itself repels water and oil, and that treatment behaves the same way on both.

What the finish actually does

It changes the surface of the thread, not the shape of it.

An untreated fibre is chemically welcoming to liquid. Water arriving on it spreads out, because spreading is the low-energy thing to do, and once it has spread it is drawn down into the narrow channels between the threads by capillary action. That is the same force that pulls water up a paper towel. A sofa without a finish is, at the fibre level, a slow paper towel.

The treatment lowers the surface energy of the fibre. Liquid arriving on it can no longer spread, because spreading now costs more energy than staying put. So the liquid's own surface tension takes over and pulls it into a bead, sitting on top of the weave with very little of it actually touching the cloth.

Water is the easy test. Oil is the real one.

Water has high surface tension. It wants to ball up, so a finish only has to stop it spreading and physics does the rest. This is why a water droplet beading on fabric is such a common demo and why it proves less than it looks like it proves.

Oil is the harder job. Its surface tension is roughly a third of water's, so it spreads on surfaces that shrug water straight off. A finish that repels water alone is defeated by the things that actually get spilled in a Singapore home: chilli oil, satay sauce, curry, the ring from a plate of char kway teow. Both our fabrics are finished to resist oil as well as water, which is why they hold up to the spills that matter rather than the ones that photograph well.

The bead is the point, not the trick.

A bead does two useful things at once. It keeps the pigment away from the fibre, so the colour in coffee, wine or soy has nothing to bind to. And it keeps the spill in one place instead of spreading to three times the size while you find a cloth. What would have been a stain the width of your hand stays the width of a coin.

Why it still feels like fabric

The finish sits on each individual fibre, not as a film across the surface. There is no coating or laminate, so the weave still has air moving through it and still feels like cloth to sit on. You would not know it was there until something goes over.

Hydrotex: the smooth one

Hydrotex™ is the flat, close-woven fabric you will find on the Sammie and the Skylar. Two things work together on it. The finish handles the liquid, and the tight flat weave means there is very little for pet hair to hook into and very little texture for a spill to hide in. It wipes down in one pass. Thirteen colours online, and the full Hydrotex guide covers the range and the care routine.

Cloudshield: the corduroy one

The Sienna is cut from a corduroy we call Cloud Weave. It has the ribbed surface and the depth that a flat weave cannot give you, which is most of the reason people choose it.

Cloudshield™ is that same corduroy with the barrier finish on it. It is an upgrade offered on the Sienna, and it covers every cover in the order including a spare. The Sienna page carries the current price. Cloud Weave without the upgrade is the cloth on its own: a good corduroy, with no barrier in it.

We keep those two names separate on purpose. If a sofa is described as Cloudshield™, the finish is on it. If it says Cloud Weave, it is not. We would rather be plain about that than let a buyer assume protection they did not pay for.

Keeping the barrier working

• Blot, then wipe. Do not scrub. Scrubbing pushes liquid past the bead and wears the finish.
• Clean cloth, cool or lukewarm water. Mild soap for anything that needs more.
• No solvents, no bleach, no fabric conditioner. Conditioner in particular coats the fibre and works directly against the finish.
• Vacuum or brush now and then. On Cloudshield™, brush along the ribs, not across them.
• Keep it out of long direct sun, the same as you would any fabric.

Which fabric is on which sofa

A guide, not a verdict. The fabrics feel completely different in the hand and that difference decides it for most people, not the spec.

Questions we get asked