Upholstery Surfaces 2019: Focus on Color and Design
- skai Design Lab now makes it possible to quickly and easily change the color, size, and repeat of designs for digitally printed upholstery surfaces
- TrendWorlds bridges the gap between inspiration and products that can be experienced for most diverse surfaces, requirements, and applications
- skai Parotega NF becomes even more attractive due to new trendy colors
Frankfurt, 8 January 2019. The technology company Continental will again present upholstery surfaces at Heimtextil in Frankfurt am Main in 2019. This year’s motto is “Mad about Textiles”, but that’s not all: the whole world of interiors will be on display for living and contract areas. The tried and tested, versatile skai upholstery materials made from coated textiles must not be missing. The skai brand just celebrated its 60-year anniversary. This year, tradition meets modern: Continental will present new colors in classic upholstery materials for the upholstery area and new possibilities for the individualization of designs. In addition, Continental will present trade fair visitors with so-called TrendWorlds, which transform the decisive parameters of the TrendCode into concrete designs. As a result, the focus at the Continental stand D15 in hall 4.0 will be on color and design as well as the topic of flame-retardant coatings for upholstery surfaces in the contract area.
skai Design Lab – digital printing a new dimension
The trend toward individualization continues to increase. The growing success of digital printing offer encouraged Continental to expand this area with another innovative component, skai Design Lab. With the new web-based skai Design Lab, customers are immediately able to select a digital print design that is right for their project from a catalogue of several thousand designs. The designs can be individually created and adapted online with regard to color, size, and repeat in a minimum of time – resulting in versatile design possibilities for interior decorators, designers, and contract outfitters. The selected designs are digitally printed on two different material grades. During embossing, the customer can choose from three grains: from fine sand structure to the typical textile structure to classic leather grain.
Customers can select a digital print design from a catalogue of several thousand designs in the skai Design Lab, here the design skai Linear Hexagon Fabric as an example. These can be individually adapted with regard to color, size, and repeat.
In the past few years, numerous, customer-specific designs for special projects have been successfully implemented with digital printing. The skai Design Lab is now the consistent next step with which the company will make a simpler and faster pathway to individual designs possible for its customers. Customers can find the skai Design Lab online at www.skai.com/interior, can logon there with their username and password – and they find themselves in the middle of the skai Design Lab with all its variety. Here, they incur no costs, neither for registration, nor for use, nor for services such as sample orders.
New trendy colors for skai Parotega NF
For years now, skai Parotega NF has been used as an upholstery material in the hospitality areas throughout the world. It has proven itself, even for applications under the most demanding conditions, as demonstrated by longevity tests, such as the Martindale abrasion test. Extremely tough and yet very pleasant and soft, the high-quality, robust skai upholstery material with its classic leather grain is universally usable – whether for seating furniture in lobbies, conference rooms, restaurants, or bars, in wellness or pool areas, or in hotel rooms. Just like all skai materials, it can also be used for upholstering walls or headboards.
The existing color palette of skai Parotega NF, which has been successfully used in the contract area for years, is now being expanded by nine trendy colors.
The product also excels due to its flame-retardant characteristics. It meets the most stringent international fire protection standards B1, DIN EN 13501 B-s3, d0, M1, and Crib 5. Together with skai Paratexa NF, skai Paduna Stars NF, and skai Palma NF, skai Parotega NF belongs to the skai upholstery materials with the highest level of flame retardancy. The existing color palette is now being expanded by nine trendy colors, which means that the collection now encompasses 40 colors. The new, modern colors are generally pastel tones and available in Ash Gray, Cinder, Stone Blue, Light Rosé, Marsala, Cappuccino, Mint, Rain Forest and Teal. They are in harmony with the Continental TrendCode, a prize-winning, interactive designer tool with which interior designers and architects can create contract interiors.
The existing color palette of skai Parotega NF, which has been successfully used in the contract area for years, is now being expanded by nine trendy colors.
TrendWorlds – from inspiration to products that can be experienced
The title of the TrendWorlds is consciously reminiscent of the Continental TrendCode.
The poster specifies the meta-trends down to the product level.
The TrendCode that is pertinent for the product design of Continental surfaces differentiates between the three meta-trends Nature Elements, Human Being und Cyber Space. From these, the Continental designers derive concrete products for the various surfaces, requirements, and applications. With TrendWorlds, the surface experts of Continental boldly demonstrate which innovations are inspired by which meta-trends and why certain colors and structures are used. Due to the integration of real samples of the new products, these also become more easily comprehensible. “Good design must be sustainable,” Ralf Imbery, Director of Design and Digitalization of the Continental surface specialists, claimed in 2012, also at Heimtextil at the time. Correspondingly, the connection of new products with the basic ideas within the TrendWorlds, shows why design work at Continental fulfills the requirement of sustainability.
Axel Schmidt
Head of Communications
ContiTech Surface Solutions