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TRENDS FROM EXCITING WINDOWS! DIRECTOR OF DESIGN
Neil Gordon

"SMART FABRICS"

Can fabric be “smart”? It doesn’t seem possible to say that woven fibers have intelligence, but I found one that does. It is part of a collection of fabrics from one of the leaders in the window covering industry – ADO.

Ado has developed a line of fabrics that can actually improve the quality of the air in a room and is also anti-bacterial. On top of that it is fire retardent, machine washable and comes in extra wide widths of 118”.  Sounds too good to be true, but it is.

Let’s start with the attribute of improving the air quality. Ado calls it ActiBreeze. ActiBreeze is the result of more than three years of development. Room-air improvement through furnishing and curtain fabrics is a very young topic. ActiBreeze can improve the room air and free it from health-threatening toxins. It does it through a revolutionary broad-spectrum effect that breaks down room-air toxins, reducing them to water vapor and CO2.

Room air is constantly polluted with toxins such as ammonia. These health-threatening elements escape from furniture, carpeting, other furnishings and the building itself. In the USA, these toxins are known to cause the so-called "Sick Building Syndrome". ActiBreeze can help prevent this clinical picture by breaking down health-threatening toxins into harmless water vapor and CO2 through a catalytic process. This is especially useful in rooms where people smoke, which can be returned to a normal state much more quickly with ActiBreeze.

Cigarette smoke, exhaust, pet odors, adhesives, ammonia and kitchen odors are typical substances that can be broken down on contact with ActiBreeze through its active catalytic process. The toxic substances are transformed into carbon dioxide and water vapor.

Improving interior hygiene is a hot topic. After several years of development, ADO has created an innovative, groundbreaking technology with an anti-bacterial effect ADO calls BioProtect. This technology has created fabrics that are permanently anti-micro bacterial that fulfill the highest hygienic standards. The fabric is remarkably effective right on the surface and will not wash out.

Harmful bacteria remain in fibers in spite of frequent cleaning, multiply quickly by the millions and can cause dangerous skin infections or allergies through simple skin contact. BioProtect helps by destroying germs on contact, before they have a chance to multiply in the fabric. This special protective characteristic makes fabrics with BioProtect ideal not only for households, but especially for hospitals, nursing homes and public buildings. Here, so-called "secondary infections" are common and often lead to difficult secondary illnesses. Curtains with BioProtect decisively reduce this risk.

The anti-bacterial protective function of BioProtect is based on silver ions that are integrated into the fibers during yarn production. These ions destroy germs by attacking their metabolism.