What Is Vinyl Material?
Vinyl Material
Vinyl is easy to identify once you know what you are looking for. If you look at this sample you can see the grain pattern is far to evenly distributed over the surface, this is one way of many ways how to tell.
Vinyl is a form of plastic, it’s a synthetic man-made material, from ethylene found in crude oil and chlorine found in regular salt.
When these two materials are manufactured, they form a product known as polyvinyl chloride PVC resin, commonly known as vinyl.
Vinyl is used a great deal in the marine industry as it provides waterproof seating for all types of marine items. Restaurants use a great deal of vinyl on seating areas as it’s easier to wipe down and take care of than traditional leather items.
Vinyl has advantages and disadvantages in its uses, in cars it’s a much colder stiffer material than genuine leather items.
Vinyl can be extremely hot to the touch in warmer weather conditions and in extreme cold conditions can be extremely cold to touch, whereas leather naturally attracts warmth and is a much more stable material.
Vinyl is prone to cracking and splitting making repairs difficult to undertake with traditional repair techniques and methods.
Vinyl seats are very common in car brands, predominantly the sides and backs of most car seats are vinyl materials, it’s easy to tell them apart from leather, vinyl stretches like a plastic and when you rub your finger over vinyl the grain will not follow your finger like genuine leather will.