A reflective laminate is a stack, and naming the stack is the only way two quotes become comparable. Most silver roll goods on the market are one of three constructions: a woven polyester scrim carrying a metallised film through a PVC layer, the same scrim carrying solid aluminium foil, or a scrim bonded with EVA instead of PVC. They look similar on a photograph and behave differently in a build.
The three constructions we run
Polyester scrim plus PVC plus metallised film is the common one, and the one most grow-tent and enclosure liners are made from.
The PVC does two jobs: it bonds the film to the cloth, and it fills the weave so the metallised surface sits on something flat rather than dipping into every yarn crossing. Substitute EVA for the PVC and you get a softer hand and a different heat tolerance; substitute solid aluminium foil for the metallised film and you get a true metal layer instead of a vapour-deposited one. That last swap is the difference described in metallised PET vs aluminium foil.
There is also a film-only family with no cloth at all — a PVC or EVA carrier film metallised on one face — used where the material is glued down rather than tensioned.
What the scrim contributes
The scrim sets the tear behaviour, the stiffness and most of the weight, and it is described by yarn denier and thread count.
Denier is the yarn; thread count is how many of those yarns sit in an inch. Both matter, and a quote that gives one without the other is incomplete. Our standard woven constructions run:
- 190T — polyester FDY, roughly 168 threads per inch, base cloth about 74.6 g/m². Currently supplied on the 210D build and priced with it; ask if the lighter cloth matters to you.
- 210D — polyester FDY, roughly 192 threads per inch, base cloth about 76.4 g/m²
- 600D — polyester DTY, roughly 80 threads per inch, base cloth about 207 g/m²
- 1680D — polyester DTY, quoted by density rather than thread count: 500D warp at 9.5, doubled 300D weft at 7.5, base cloth about 186 g/m²
Note that 600D and 1680D use DTY where the lighter cloths use FDY, and that the 1680D base cloth is lighter than the 600D base cloth despite the heavier yarn — the weave is far more open. Denier alone predicts neither weight nor strength, which is the argument set out in 210D vs 600D.
Base cloth weight and finished weight are different numbers
The finished laminate weighs two to three times the bare scrim, because the coating and film are most of the mass.
This is where quotes most often talk past each other. A supplier quoting “76 gsm” is describing the cloth before lamination; a buyer receiving 320 gsm goods thinks they were misled. Both numbers are real. Ask for the finished weight, because that is what arrives on the pallet and what your freight is calculated on.
Typical finished figures for our standard constructions:
| Construction | Finished weight | Finished thickness |
|---|---|---|
| 210D, polyester + PVC + metallised film | 320 g/m² | 0.28 mm |
| 600D, polyester + PVC + metallised film | 350 g/m² | 0.35 mm |
| 1680D, polyester + PVC + metallised film | 480 g/m² | 0.56 mm |
| Polyester + solid aluminium foil | 210 g/m² | 0.35 mm |
| 300D, polyester + EVA + metallised film | 230 g/m² | 0.34 mm |
| Scrim-backed, polyester + PVC + metallised film | 300 g/m² | 0.25 mm |
| Double-face brushed knit + foam + 210D litchi-emboss face | 340 g/m² | 1.45 mm |
The last row is a different animal from the rest: a three-layer composite with a brushed polyester knit on both outer faces, a foam interlayer of the kind used in wetsuits, and a 210D litchi-emboss reflective face bonded on. It is by far the thickest construction here at 1.45 mm and is used where the material has to cushion as well as reflect.
Treat these as the nominal values for the standard build. Production runs to a tolerance, and the figures for your order are confirmed in writing against the construction actually quoted. Of the woven builds, only the scrim-backed one has a fixed standard width, 1.37 m; the rest are slit from the master roll to the width you order.
The film-only constructions
Where there is no cloth, thickness is quoted on the carrier before metallising, and the finished material comes out slightly thicker.
A PVC carrier at 0.1 mm finishes around 0.12 mm; an EVA carrier at 0.15 mm finishes near its starting figure. Embossing changes this — a deep pattern adds caliper without adding material — so a finished thickness quoted against one pattern does not transfer to another. Both run at 1.22 m or 1.37 m width as standard.
These are the constructions to ask about when the material is bonded to a panel rather than hung, since without a scrim there is nothing to carry a tension load.
Why we publish construction and not performance
Layer structure, yarn denier, weight and thickness are things you can verify on arrival with a rule and a scale; optical performance is not.
We do not print reflectivity or emissivity percentages on this site. Those figures only mean something attached to a named test method and a report covering the exact construction, and a number quoted for a bare metallised film does not carry over to the laminate that film ends up in. The same caution applies to fire performance: a rating held by a base cloth is not a rating held by the finished composite. What documentation exists for a given construction is listed on our certifications page, and we would rather show you an empty row than a borrowed number.
Checking what actually arrived against what was quoted is covered in how to check a roll on arrival.
What to send us
Name the construction, not the appearance, and a quote comes back in one round instead of three.
Useful: the family (PVC-bonded, foil, or EVA-bonded), the scrim denier if you have a preference, the finished weight you are targeting, the slit width, the roll length your unwind takes, and any test documentation your market requires. If you do not know the denier, give the finished gsm and what the panel has to survive — that is enough to narrow it.
Catalogue examples of the PVC-bonded woven family, so the descriptions above have something to look at: Fine Weave Reflective Laminate, Silver / Dark Back for the plain silver build, Micro Grid Reflective Laminate, Bright Silver / Black Back where the second face has to stop light, and Brick Emboss Reflective Laminate, Gloss Black for a dark outer skin.
Send those details and we will confirm the construction, the available widths and the documentation in writing before anything is made.