Garment velvet, 130–250 gsm
The lightest band drapes fluidly for dresses and soft jackets. Garment velveteen in this class is often woven 110–140 cm wide, narrower than furnishing cloth.
Woven velvet, knitted velour
Velvet is woven as two face-to-face layers and sliced apart on the loom; velour is a knitted pile, usually 200–300 gsm, with 4-way stretch. Everything else — weight, width, abrasion rating, sewing settings and cleaning — follows from that one structural difference. This page gives the numbers behind both fabrics.
Key figures
Scroll the strip sideways — 6 cards.
The lightest band drapes fluidly for dresses and soft jackets. Garment velveteen in this class is often woven 110–140 cm wide, narrower than furnishing cloth.
Mid-weight cloth with enough body for folds to hold their line. It comes off the loom at furnishing widths of 137–150 cm (54–60 inches).
The heavy band built for seats. General domestic use calls for 15,000–25,000 Martindale cycles; commercial work starts at 30,000.
A knitted pile with 4-way stretch that moves with the body and recovers. One mid-weight band covers most velour, unlike velvet's three.
Longer pile feels plusher but crushes and watermarks more easily. Short pile is the safer choice for seats and anything cleaned often.
The two ways pile fabric fails in care: fibres flattened by pressure, and rings left where damp pile dried unevenly. Steam from 10–20 cm lifts both.
No verified dates are part of the known facts for this topic, so no chronology is published here.
| Property | Velvet | Velour |
|---|---|---|
| How it is made | Woven as two face-to-face layers and sliced apart on the loom | Knitted as a single pile cloth |
| Typical weight | 130–550 gsm across apparel, curtain and upholstery bands | Usually 200–300 gsm |
| Stretch | Little natural give in the woven base | 4-way stretch |
| Width off the loom | 137–150 cm (54–60 in) furnishing; 110–140 cm garment velveteen | Set by the knitting machine, not fixed by construction |
| Pile height | About 1.5–4 mm; longer piles crush and watermark more easily | Short pile on a stretch knit base |
| Wash limit | 30 °C or colder, gentle cycle | 30 °C or colder, gentle cycle |
Velvet is a woven pile sliced from a double cloth on the loom; velour is a knitted pile with natural 4-way stretch.
Velvet begins on the loom as two face-to-face layers woven at the same time, joined by shared pile yarns. A blade slices the layers apart while the cloth is still on the loom, leaving two pieces of fabric, each with a dense cut pile of about 1.5–4 mm. Because the base is a firm weave, velvet holds its shape and has little natural give.
Velour takes a different route. It is normally knitted as a pile fabric, usually weighing 200–300 gsm, and the knit loop structure gives it 4-way stretch: it extends lengthwise, crosswise and on the bias, then recovers. That single difference — woven versus knitted — explains most of what you feel in the hand.
A quick bench check separates the two in seconds. Pull the fabric gently in both directions: velour stretches and springs back, woven velvet barely moves. Then look at weight and width — furnishing velvet leaves the loom 137–150 cm wide, while velour's width is set by the knitting machine rather than by a slicing loom.
Velvet spans 130–550 gsm across three end-use bands; velour clusters in a single 200–300 gsm band.
Apparel velvet runs 130–250 gsm, curtain and decor velvet 250–400 gsm, and upholstery velvet 350–550 gsm. The heavier the cloth, the more structured the drape: light velvet falls fluidly, heavy velvet stands in folds.
Width follows the same logic. Furnishing velvet comes off the loom 137–150 cm wide (54–60 inches), built for sofas and full-length curtains. Garment velveteen is often narrower at 110–140 cm, sized for pattern pieces rather than windows.
Weight is not the only variable. Pile height runs about 1.5–4 mm, and longer piles crush and watermark more easily than short ones — so a heavy velvet with a long pile can still mark where a lighter, shorter-pile cloth would not.
Every figure on this page comes from the standard trade ranges for pile fabrics: gsm bands, loom widths, Martindale cycles, needle and stitch settings, and wash temperatures. No laboratory testing was commissioned for this page, and no single manufacturer's datasheet is quoted.
Where the numbers come from
The figures on this page reflect commonly published trade ranges for pile fabrics rather than claims from any one maker.