Designer Textile Houses

Browse free designer textile house lookbooks — fabrics, wallcoverings and passementerie from Schumacher, Pierre Frey, Kravet, Cowtan & Tout, Lee Jofa, Cole & Son and Pindler.

Designer Textile Houses at a Glance

Designer textile houses sit upstream of the rest of the home-decor industry. They are the fabric, wallcovering, and trimming brands that interior designers specify when furnishing high-end residential and contract projects — and most of them have traditionally sold exclusively to the trade through showrooms in Chicago's Merchandise Mart, New York's D&D Building, Pacific Design Center, and the London and Paris design districts. In recent years many of these houses have opened public-facing lookbooks, e-commerce on a curated cut-yardage subset, and direct-to-consumer wallcovering programs. The catalogs below represent the printed and published lookbooks they make publicly accessible.

Historic English & American houses — Cowtan & Tout, Schumacher, Brunschwig & Fils, Scalamandré, Lee Jofa, and Cole & Son are the heritage houses whose chintzes, damasks, toiles, hand-blocked wallcoverings, and woven jacquards anchor traditional rooms. Many of these archives go back 100+ years (Schumacher 1889, Cole & Son 1875, Scalamandré 1929), and current collections continue to draw from those archives. Pierre Frey (Paris, 1935) and Pindler (Los Angeles, 1946) round out the historic-and-luxury tier.

Designer-trade fabric & furniture houses — Kravet, Robert Allen, Donghia, Holland & Sherry, Romo, Nina Campbell, Christopher Farr Cloth, and Jack Lenor Larsen built the modern to-the-trade fabric and furniture business. Kravet alone distributes for 40+ allied brands and is the largest US designer textile distributor. Romo Group (UK) houses Romo, Black Edition, Mark Alexander, Villa Nova, and Zinc. These are the names a designer's purchase order most often lists for current residential projects.

Modern & contract textiles — Knoll Textiles, Maharam, Designtex, Carnegie, and Pollack design contract-grade fabrics for offices, hospitality, healthcare, and high-design residential. Maharam holds licenses on Charles & Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, and Hella Jongerius patterns; Knoll Textiles distributes the Knoll Luxe collection. These houses are often the first place residential designers source heavy-duty performance textiles.

Specialty passementerie & trim — Samuel & Sons (New York, 1972), Houlès (Paris, 1928), and Wendy Cushing Trimmings (London) are the dedicated trim, tassel, fringe, gimp, cord, and rosette houses. A finished room reads as designer-quality largely because of the trim — these are the catalogs to flip through when specifying drapery headers, pillow edging, and upholstered furniture welts.

What to Look For in a Designer Fabric Lookbook

The best designer textile catalogs publish, per pattern: colorways (most patterns are offered in 6-20 colors), fiber content and weave (linen, silk, cotton, wool, viscose, blend), width (typically 54" but can be 27" for narrow-loom or 110-140" for sheers), repeat dimensions (the vertical and horizontal pattern repeat — drives yardage calculations), finish (washed linen, glazed cotton, FR treatment), and application suitability (drapery, upholstery, light-use, heavy-use, indoor-outdoor). For wallcoverings: width (typically 27", 36" or 52"), roll length, and match (straight, drop, or random). For trim: width, repeat, and content (rayon, silk, cotton, blend). The lookbook is where a designer narrows from a universe of 15,000 SKUs to a manageable specification list before requesting cuttings for client approval.

Trade-Only vs Direct-to-Consumer Access

Historically, the designer textile houses listed here required a trade account to purchase yardage — proof of an interior design business, resale certificate, and a signed dealer agreement. That is still the default for full-collection access, but several houses have opened consumer-facing programs in the last decade: Schumacher publishes a public lookbook and runs the F. Schumacher "Made by Hand" program with a public e-commerce catalog. Pierre Frey sells select wallcoverings direct. Cole & Son sells wallcoverings via design centers and select retailers. Kravet, Lee Jofa, and Brunschwig & Fils maintain consumer-facing lookbooks but still route purchasing through a designer or showroom. Maharam publishes the Maharam Stories archive (now part of the MoMA Design Store rotation). Most lookbooks linked below are the publicly downloadable consumer-and-trade versions.

Designing With Designer Textiles

A designer specifying a fully-realized room typically pulls fabrics from two or three houses — a hero print or weave (often from a heritage house like Schumacher or Pierre Frey), a coordinating solid or texture (often from Kravet, Romo, Donghia, or Holland & Sherry), and a trim or passementerie accent (Samuel & Sons, Houlès). The houses publish coordinated collections — Schumacher's Veranda, Kravet Couture's Kelly Wearstler — that take some of the pairing decisions off the table. For wallcoverings, the standard pairing is one statement wall (a Cole & Son, Schumacher, or Pierre Frey large-repeat pattern) plus three painted walls in a paint color drawn from the wallcovering's palette.

Free Designer Textile Catalogs by Mail

Most lookbooks below are mailed free to designers, decorators, and homeowners researching a project. Heritage-house lookbooks (Cowtan & Tout, Schumacher, Brunschwig & Fils, Lee Jofa, Cole & Son, Pierre Frey, Pindler) are particularly worth requesting in print — the large-format photography and pattern repeat scaling are easier to evaluate on paper than on a phone screen, and the printed swatch chips inside many of these books bridge the gap between digital images and the actual fabric you'll be specifying. To request a lookbook, click any catalog below and submit your name and email (mailing address requested for print lookbooks). The brand will ship the printed lookbook and add you to their notification list for new collection drops and seasonal supplements.