This is the decision that quietly determines whether a custom throw is a keepsake or a season’s merchandise, and it takes two minutes to get right.

What jacquard actually is

The loom raises and lowers individual warp threads so the coloured yarns themselves form the pattern. The design is structural — it is the cloth.

So it appears on the reverse as a colour-swapped mirror, it cannot crack at a fold, and washing does nothing to it because there is no layer to remove.

What it costs you

Colour is limited to the yarns loaded on the loom, usually a handful. Fine photographic gradients cannot be woven at all, and small type disappears below the minimum feature size of the weave.

And the loom has to be set up for your design — a genuine one-off, like tooling. It should be quoted as its own line and held for reorders.

What printing buys

Any artwork: photographs, gradients, a hundred colours, a design that changes monthly. No set-up at all, so a run of twelve is viable.

It prints one face. The reverse is the base cloth.

The one thing to check on a printed throw

Ask whether it is reactive or pigment printed, or a heat-applied film. Reactive and pigment soak into the cloth and stay soft.

A film goes stiff, cracks along the fold lines and peels. On a throw, which lives folded, that is the worst possible failure mode — and it is the cheapest method, which is why it keeps appearing.