Baize or Felt? A Guide to Buying Wisely

We feel passionately that consumers should be given clear and accurate information about products and it frustrates us that members of the public are regularly being sold ‘quality baize’ when they’re actually buying a fabric which is inferior and in most cases, not even baize. So, we’ve compiled this brief guide to help you shop wisely for your baize.

We have been making top-quality baize table cloths for bridge for over quarter of a century, so we consider ourselves to be experts on fabrics for card tables and cardplay.

There is a lot of confusion about the difference between baize and felt, not only amongst consumers but also retailers. This isn’t surprising when you search online and find many suppliers describing felt as baize, or a fabric as ‘baize felt’, ‘felt baize’ or even felt/baize as if the two fabrics are the same. They’re not!

Differences Between Baize and Felt – Baize vs Felt

It’s important to know whether you’re buying baize or felt, because the two fabrics are very different. Felt is a lightweight fabric made from matted fibres of either wool or a synthetic. Being matted rather than held together in a tight weave, the fibres easily fluff up or ‘pill’ if rubbed. On the other hand, baize is a strong, dense and hard-wearing fabric made from woven strands of wool. If you look closely at baize, you’ll see it has a warp and a weft. It it’s top-quality, such as the fabric we use to make our baize bridge cloths, it doesn’t pill and it will look great and last for many years. There really is no comparison between felt and the far superior baize.

Not All Baizes Are Equal

Having said that baize is better than felt, baizes can differ wildly in quality too. We’ve seen baize produced in the Far East which was a woven fabric but it was very thin and had a loose weave. We ran tests on this fabric and found that it lost a lot of fibres quite quickly and was poor quality.

As a rule of thumb, good quality baize is not a cheap fabric. If you find a supplier selling cheap baize, ask yourself:

Is this baize or felt?
If it’s baize, is it good quality?
Do I trust this supplier to know the difference between baize and felt, and to know the different qualities of baize?