Looking for Car Upholstery Fabric? Use Alcantara!
Searching for “car upholstery fabric”? Look no further - Alcantara is the most ideal car interior upholstery fabric for your car!
Alcantara is an Italian-made synthetic fabric that is durable and feels like suede. Alcantara has a soft, suede-like microfibre pile and is renowned for its unmatched durability. Alcantara is commonly used in car interiors such as Alcantara for car seats or Alcantara steering wheel covers.
Alcantara is made of roughly 68% polyester and around 32% polyurethane. The actual construction of the fabric is unknown and is proprietary information that belongs to Alcantara.
Alcantara is highly sought-after by car enthusiasts - here’s why!
1. Alcantara is globally recognized
Many global renowned automotive brands use alcantara for upholstery. More recognized high-end brands such as BMW or Porsche. For example, BMW Italia partnered with Alcantara in 2021 for a project called the limited series BMW X5 Timeless Edition. The BMW X5 Timeless Edition is an edition that celebrates the automotive group’s first model from the BMW X range. The BMW X5 Timeless was BMW’s first Sport Activity Vehicle (SAV), 20 years after BMW’s launch of the BMW X range.
The choice of Alcantara to cover the interiors was for the following key reasons: Alcantara is refined and, at the same time, resistant, lightweight, easy to clean and offers the perfect grip in sporty driving conditions.
The front and rear seats of the BMW X5 Timeless are covered in plain black, alternating with an exclusive perforated design with a grey back running vertically down the central part. The Alcantara material also covers the headliner, the central armrest and the door panels. It is all embellished with contrasting stitching which echoes the colour of the exterior.
2. Alcantara is easy to clean
Alcantara is commonly used in automotive interiors because it is fabulously easy to clean. Unlike leather materials which are made out of animal skin and contain oil, Alcantara is a manufactured material l and does not get easily stained or dirty.
That said, it is still possible to get Alcantara dirty, so it is imperative to maintain your Alcantara car seats or Alcantara steering wheel cover routinely to keep the fabric in top condition. Here are tips for how to clean Alcantara.
3. Alcantara is water and damage-resistant
Thanks to its unique and unrivalled material, Alcantara comes with anti-fouling properties and durable character. Alcantara are more water- and fire-resistant than other types of fabric. Moreover, Alcantara is more damage-resistant which means that the fabric is less likely to be damaged from scratches, UV rays from sunshine, and other external factors. These attributes make Alcantara a fabulous upholstery fabric for your car!
4. Alcantara fabric is animal- and cruelty-free
Alcantara is a synthetic microfiber material that was developed in the 1970s by Toray Industries in Japan. The product is made from a blend of polyurethane and polyester to make a soft-finished fabric ready to be used for car interiors. This means that the product is non-animal and supports your love for animals.
5. Alcantara offers unrivalled soft and premium touch fabric
While being more light and durable than natural suede, Alcantara is still among the most delicate materials one can find in a car interior. The sophisticated, scratch-proof, easy-to-clean, versatile, and 100% Carbon neutral material gives it a soft touch and a color that doesn’t easily fade away. The official Alcantara website promises the product to deliver an emotion of beauty that is a result of the excellence of its creators from Italy. For this reason Alcantara is used for luxury garments, hand bags, and for furnishing home interiors as well.
Alcantara is a favoured choice of designers, both brand and automotive, and architectural firms inclusive. Apart from these applications, it is also used extensively for consumer electronics like making mobile phone covers to get a texture and color that differentiates it from the rest in the market.
