Capability
A rub count is a threshold, not a lifespan.
Every FF&E schedule names an abrasion figure, and most suppliers answer by quoting the biggest number their mill will print. The trade body that publishes those thresholds is blunter than the industry that markets them: above the guideline, more cycles have not been shown to mean a longer life, and the same fabric can test 60 per cent apart on two runs. This page sets out what the two methods physically do, what the published thresholds are, and which parts of the number a specifier can rely on.
Four things the number does not tell you
Two methods, two scales, no exchange rate
Wyzenbeek (ASTM D4157, against ACT-approved #10 cotton duck) and Martindale (ASTM D4966 at 12 kPa, EN ISO 12947-2 in Europe) abrade differently and are counted differently — double rubs against cycles. ACT sets a separate threshold for each rather than converting between them. A fabric offered as "50,000" with no method named has told you nothing yet.
The same fabric does not test the same twice
ACT's own Wyzenbeek Performance Verification Fabric Study, run in 2009, found test results on one fabric varying from test to test by at least 60 per cent. Two mills quoting different figures for comparable cloth may both be right, and a specification decided on a 10 per cent difference is deciding on noise.
Above the guideline, more is just more
ACT states it plainly: results exceeding the high-traffic guideline "have not been shown to be an indicator of increased fabric lifespan," and a fabric with twice the cycles does not have twice the service life. ACT requires members claiming over-guideline results to publish that caveat alongside the figure. Paying a premium for 100,000 cycles buys a bigger number, not a longer-lived chair.
Coated fabrics are outside the test
ISO 12947-2 does not apply to coated or laminated fabrics. A vinyl or PU quoting a Martindale figure is quoting a method its own standard excludes from scope — which matters, because coated materials are exactly what gets specified for bar and poolside seating on durability grounds.
What the two tests physically do
Both measure flat abrasion and nothing else. Neither reproduces the way a seat actually fails, which is at the edges, the seams and the front rail.
Martindale — EN ISO 12947-2:2016
Circular specimens about 38 mm across are held against a standard wool abradant under load and moved in a Lissajous figure, so the cloth is abraded from every direction rather than along one axis. The end point is specimen breakdown, judged by inspection at fixed intervals rather than by a machine. This is the European method and the one most hotel schedules outside the US will name.
Wyzenbeek — ASTM D4157
The fabric is drawn back and forth across a fixed abradant — for ACT-compliant results, #10 cotton duck. One pass forward and back is a double rub. It is the North American convention, and the reason a US specification and a European one for the same chair carry two different figures.
The published thresholds
ACT, general contract use in private spaces: 15,000 double rubs Wyzenbeek, or 20,000 cycles Martindale. ACT, high-traffic public spaces: 30,000 double rubs Wyzenbeek, or 40,000 cycles Martindale. A hotel lobby, bar or restaurant is a high-traffic public space; a guest-room desk chair usually is not, and specifying it as one costs money without buying anything.
What actually wears the fabric out
ACT surveyed its members on why fabrics fail in the field. The answers were improper cleaning, inadequate maintenance, physical abuse and unsuitable application — not surface abrasion. That points somewhere unglamorous: the cleaning code and the maintenance regime decide more than the rub count does, and the most common expensive mistake is a cloth that cannot survive the cleaning chemical housekeeping actually uses. Ask what the property will clean it with before you ask how many cycles it survived.
Where this lands in a project
At schedule stage
The traffic class of each piece is decided here — lobby, bar, restaurant and corridor seating on the high-traffic threshold, guest-room occasional pieces usually below it. This is the point where a mismatch costs nothing to fix.
At material approval
The fabric arrives with the mill's evidence, naming its method and its figure. Where a fabric is client-supplied or studio-specified, that evidence stays the mill's — we build with it, we do not re-issue it under our name.
At substitution
A discontinued colourway or a late swap changes the evidence with it. Substitutions get re-checked against the traffic class the schedule set, for the same reason they get re-checked against the fire standard.
On the floor
Durability that the test never sees is built in at the frame and the seam: rail construction, seam allowance and the way an arm is wrapped decide where a chair gives up long before flat abrasion does.
What we do not claim
We do not test fabric. We hold no laboratory accreditation and we issue no abrasion certificate — those belong to the mill that wove the cloth and the test house that ran it, and a factory re-issuing them under its own name is a claim worth distrusting. What we do is build to the schedule, read the fabric evidence against the traffic class it will actually live in, and say so when the two do not match.
Questions we are asked
- Is 100,000 Martindale better than 40,000?
- It is a bigger number. ACT, which publishes the thresholds, states that results above its high-traffic guideline have not been shown to indicate a longer lifespan, and requires that caveat to be published alongside such claims. Above the threshold, spend the budget on the cleaning specification instead.
- Can you convert Wyzenbeek double rubs to Martindale cycles?
- No, and ACT does not publish a conversion — it publishes a separate threshold for each method. If a schedule names one method and a mill quotes the other, the two figures need testing on the same basis rather than arithmetic.
- Our fabric is a coated vinyl and the datasheet quotes Martindale. Is that valid?
- ISO 12947-2 excludes coated and laminated fabrics from its scope, so the figure is being quoted outside the method's own stated application. It is not necessarily meaningless, but it is not the comparison it looks like, and it should be read alongside the manufacturer's own durability data for that material.
- Do you supply the fabric or do we?
- Most hotel programmes arrive with the fabric specified by the studio, and often supplied to us. Where it is not client-supplied, we procure it against the schedule — and its evidence comes with it either way, from the mill.
Send the fabric schedule with the traffic classes on it.
Tell us where each piece lives — lobby, bar, corridor, guest room — and we come back with the fabrics whose evidence does not match the class they are specified into, before the schedule freezes.