Expanding its portfolio of high-performance Sun Control Textiles™, Mermet USA has introduced Chroma™, an innovative solar shade fabric with aluminum, high reflectance backing. Chroma’s two percent openness and unique construction of fiberglass and metal enables the fabric to deliver excellent glare control, thermal comfort and view through. Chroma’s exemplary fabrication, function and form places it among the top heat control fabrics on the market today.
Chroma reflects up to 78 percent of solar radiation for heat management and blocks up to 98 percent of visible light. When used with a standard insulated glass unit, the fabric can improve the combined Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) up to 29 percent for improved building envelope performance. Additionally, the shade fabric is available in five classic colors and a tightly woven openness for beautiful installation, thermal and optical control.
“We are excited to introduce Chroma as a solution to the daylighting and temperature issues commonly faced in commercial, educational and residential facilities,” said Robert Beals, Product Manager for Mermet. “With Chroma, we challenged ourselves to deliver a solar shade fabric that could meet the current stylistic and functional demands of architects and designers globally.”
Similar to Mermet’s other fiberglass core shade fabrics, Chroma provides mechanical resistance and dimensional stability, but with a nano-layer of aluminum for solar performance and view through clarity. The fabric’s fiberglass yarn is inherently strong, allowing the fabric to test excellently for adhesion, weathering and breaking strength. The nano-layer of aluminum is applied precisely and only covers the fabric’s fibers, leaving the 2x2 basket weave and textile properties visually intact. With all its attributes combined, Chroma essentially provides the reflective properties of white fabric and the visual properties of dark fabric in one, enhancing temperature control and preventing glare, while maintaining ideal view through.
Chroma’s combined attributes make the fabric ideal for optimizing indoor environmental quality for comfort, health, productivity and sustainability. In addition to its ability to control light and conserve energy, Chroma is fireproof, RoHS certified, and has been tested to meet globally recognized efficiency standards including ASTM, NFPA and California U.S. Title 19.
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About Mermet
Since 1951, Mermet has been dedicated to producing quality fabrics that meet and exceed our customer’s expectations. Mermet entered the solar protection market in 1976, and during the next thirty years developed the most technologically advanced products in the industry. Today, Mermet is recognized as a world leader in the solar protection market. Mermet’s extensive product range, which covers a variety of applications and provides high performance fabrics that meet the growing market demand for sustainable and healthier homes and workplaces, is produced entirely in the United States.
