Window Fashion

Basics

• Window fashion covers a wide range of fabrics, used for curtains, drapes, vertical or roller blinds, blackout fabrics, or even for stage decoration.
• The fabric may be of woven, flat knit or lace construction
• It may be made from cellulose or artificial fibers.
• The fabric surface may be flat or structured jacquard, fiber flocked or velour.
• The fabric weight range starts at 30 to 40 g/m² and reaches up to 350 g/m² or even higher.

• Fabrics are either printed in cross or in longitudinal direction. The printing machines must be selected accordingly.
• Cross-printed fabrics are covered by the 2,200 mm COLARIS.PRINTER model.
• Longitudinal printed fabrics need a 3,400 mm COLARIS.PRINTER, because the product usually needs to cover the full room height.
• As mostly bright and strong colors and a big color gamut are required, an 8-color setup is mostly preferred. However, a 4-color setup could double the capacity and would therefore economize the printing process.
• Cellulose and Protein Fiber based fabrics are suitable for printing.
• Cellulose based fabrics can be printed with Reactive or VAT dye inks.
• PA (Nylon) and Protein Fiber based fabrics are mostly printed with Acid dye inks.
• Pigment inks may be used on fabrics made from any fiber or yarn blend.
• Reactive prints are known for brilliant and bright print results with good washing fastness, but have a limited light fastness, especially with red shades.
• Acid dye prints are very bright, but have limited light fastness properties. Chlorine fastness is poor.
• VAT dye inks have excellent light and wash fastness properties, incl. chlorine bleach and dry cleaning. For real high-end fabrics, VAT dye inks are the best solution.
• Pigment inks are good for high light fastness, but have poor haptics and a low resistance against dry and wet rubbing.
• On PES and PES Microfiber fabrics, PES flock or sued fabrics, direct disperse and direct sublimation inks are used.
• PES inks give strong colors and have excellent light, rub and wash fastness properties.

Reactive printing

• Inline inkjet pre-treatment applied by the CHROMOJET digital pre-coating unit
• Design printing with COLARIS, using Reactive dye inks
• Offline ink fixation through steaming process
• Post-print washing to clean the fabric from unfixed dyes and pre-treatment chemicals
• Final fabric finishing according to the customer's needs

Option: Inline fixation of inks by a wet-in-wet process right after printing, thus saving energy and reducing the handling process