Fabric width and cutting yield: why 150cm vs 145cm matters
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Two rolls of fabric, same GSM, same composition, same price per metre — but one is 150 cm wide and the other 145 cm. That 5 cm difference looks trivial on a spec sheet. On a cutting table, across a production run of a few thousand garments, it can be the difference between a profitable order and a break-even one.
Why width changes yield, not just cost
Garment pattern pieces are cut from a marker — a layout of every pattern piece arranged to use as much of the fabric's width as possible with minimal waste between pieces. A wider fabric gives the marker more room to nest pattern pieces efficiently; a narrower one forces more waste at the edges, or fewer pieces per row, even though the price you're quoted is per linear metre, not per garment.
This is why comparing fabric purely on price per metre can be misleading. The number that actually predicts your cost per garment is marker efficiency — the percentage of fabric that ends up in cut pieces rather than waste — and width is one of the biggest levers on that number.
Standard widths in suiting fabric
| Width | Common use |
|---|---|
| 112–115 cm | Narrower looms, some specialty and lighter-weight fabrics |
| 144–150 cm | The standard range for most woven suiting — the width most patterns are drafted against |
| 152–160 cm | Wider format, increasingly common for cost-efficient cutting on larger pattern pieces |
Most suiting patterns are drafted assuming a width in the 144–150 cm range, which is why that band is the de facto industry standard — it's not an arbitrary loom setting, it's what pattern-making has converged on over decades.
Doing the comparison properly
When two fabrics are quoted at different widths, don't compare price per metre directly. Convert to price per square metre first (price per metre ÷ width in metres) — that puts both fabrics on equal footing for raw material cost. Then, if you have marker data or a pattern efficiency estimate for your specific garment, apply it: a fabric that's 5 cm wider but yields 3% better marker efficiency can be the cheaper choice per finished garment even at a slightly higher price per metre.
What to specify when you order
State the width you need explicitly, and confirm whether it's usable width (inside the selvedge, what you can actually cut from) or full width including selvedge — mills sometimes quote the latter, which overstates what your cutting room can actually use by 1–2 cm per side. On every roll we ship, the width we state on the spec sheet is usable width, measured after finishing, not a nominal loom width that shrinks once the fabric is off the roll.