Percale Fabric Mill Directory

What Percale Fabric Is

Percale is defined by construction and density rather than by fibre alone. It is a plain weave, the simplest interlacing of warp over weft, but woven tight: the trade convention is a thread count of at least 180 threads per square inch, and better percales run well above 200. Because the yarns are packed so closely, the surface is smooth without being shiny, the cloth feels cool against skin, and it holds up to the frequent hot washing that bed linen gets. Cotton is the classic fibre, often long-staple cotton for the smoothest hand, but polyester-cotton percale is woven in large volume for hotels and institutions that need easy care and lower cost.

That tightness also makes percale a useful printing and dyeing ground: colours sit cleanly on the smooth surface, and the cloth does not show the grin of a looser weave when it is stretched over a mattress or a pillow. Compared with its sheeting rival sateen, which floats warp yarns over the surface for lustre and drape, percale reads matte, feels crisper, and wrinkles in a more honest, linen-like way that many sleepers prefer. Mills describe percale by thread count, fibre and width, and buyers should treat very high thread-count claims with care, since multi-ply yarn counting can inflate the number without improving the cloth.

Where Percale Fabric Is Used

Bed linen is percale's home ground: sheets, pillowcases and duvet covers for homes, hotels, hospitals and dormitories, anywhere a cool, durable, frequently laundered cloth is the point. The same qualities serve shirting at the lighter end, summer dresses and blouses, quilting cottons, and linings that need to be smooth and tightly woven enough not to let feathers or filling fibres work through, which is why percale relatives appear in ticking and down-proof applications. Percale also takes embroidery and hemstitching well, so it shows up in heirloom sewing and in the whitework tradition of pillowcases and christening wear.

The four listings below are this directory's percale mills, each linked to its Fabric Mills by Name profile: Ahmed Fine Textile Mills Limited, Dyed Fabrics, Gulshan Weaving Mills and Rashid Textile Printing Ind. (Pvt.) Ltd., all of Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the world's great cotton weaving countries, with integrated spinning and weaving groups around Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad supplying sheeting to export markets, so an all-Pakistan list for a cotton sheeting cloth is exactly what a buyer would expect. None has been removed: no listing was verified dead, and this directory's standing rule is to keep a listing when in doubt. Thank you for using the Apparel Search Fabric Mill Directory.

Specifying and Caring for Percale

Specify percale by fibre and staple, thread count, weave width and finish, and handle a sample against sateen before choosing: percale should feel smooth and slightly crisp, never papery or coated. Check the cloth held to the light, where a genuine tight plain weave shows an even grid with no thin lanes, and ask whether the thread count is single-ply, because that is the honest basis of comparison. For hotel and institutional work, poly-cotton percale trades a little of cotton's cool hand for faster drying, less ironing and a lower replacement cost per wash cycle.

Care is straightforward and is part of the fabric's appeal. Cotton percale washes warm to hot, tolerates regular laundering better than most apparel cloth, and softens gradually over its first washes while keeping its matte surface. It wrinkles after washing, which most users accept as the character of the weave; removing it warm from the dryer and smoothing it by hand deals with most of it, and a quick iron restores the full crispness hotels want. Avoid overloading the wash, since the tight weave abrades at fold lines when it cannot move freely in the drum.

Percale Fabric Mills Listed Here