Choosing bamboo product for eco-friendly interior designs

Bamboo product has it all - its use as a durable, eco-friendly home material is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, bamboo products range from clothing and bed linen to furniture upholstery.

"Bamboo is great. It grows anywhere in the world and produces very high-end textile products," says David Read of Fabric Pavilion, wholesalers who have recently begun importing the newly available fabric from Europe. "It's a very similar production process to linen - the plant fibre is mulched and then extruded into a yarn. The end result is a very heavy-duty, serviceable product and bamboo textile designs are very contemporary."

Bamboo product and new technology

According to David, while bamboo fibre for textiles is nothing new, the technology to produce the particular quality needed for upholstery bamboo fabric has only been available in the last year.

Produced in Belgium, the current range of bamboo products for interiors is made up of a variety of velvets that are, according to David, "equally at home in a modern residential home as a five-star hotel". He says there are also a couple of choices that could be used as bamboo curtains.

"Some do have a lovely, soft, drapery feel, and they would work well as curtains, especially since bamboo products are also very UV tolerant," he explains. "As different types of yarns are extruded, we could end up with ones suitable for many other uses. We see it as an expanding resource, but this will depend also on how quickly the technology develops.”

Using eco-friendly material

Bamboo is a particularly earth-friendly plant and a human-friendly fibre. Because of its complex root system, not only is the plant great for regenerating areas suffering from soil erosion, but its leaves also produce about 35 per cent more oxygen than trees.

"There is also something inherent in its molecular structure that means it doesn't need pesticides or anti-microbial treatments, so bamboo is a very good fibre for asthmatics and allergy sufferers," says David.

Contact a bamboo product retailer in your area: