Our patio awning fabrics are high-performance materials designed to provide both a functional and decorative role, however, despite meeting the highest European standards and laboratory tests, they can only be manufactured to a limited degree of perfection even with today’s state of the art machinery.
Waviness and rippling occurs both around the seams (where the panels of fabric are joined – every 1.2m) and along the side hems (where the fabric is folded on the sides) due to the arrangement of the made-up patio awning fabric, with double layers/thicknesses of material where the fabric is joined (seams) and where it is folded (side hems). This results in the fabric assuming two different diameters around the rollertube.
The tension put on the fabric by the powerful spring-loaded folding arms causes the areas where there are double thicknesses of material (seam, side hems) to press down harder on each other resulting in waviness and rippling immediately adjacent to the seams/side hems. This effect also occurs in the centre of the panel when water is allowed to gather on the fabric forming a trough of water in the material, along with the use of patio awnings in windy conditions, which puts additional pressure and strain on the fabric seams and hems.
This particular natural characteristic is more noticeable on plain (solid) coloured patio awning fabrics with mid-dark fabrics including warm reds, royal blues, forest greens etc the most noticeable. Striped patio awning fabrics tend not to highlight this characteristic as much due to the varied colours of the stripes which ‘hide’ to a degree the waviness/rippling that occurs with all patio awning fabrics.