If you typed simis and actually meant Simonis pool table cloth colors, you're in the right place. If you were actually hunting for a Logitech headset, The Sims board game, or how to clean your iPhone speaker—solid searches, but this article won't help with any of those. For the table people still with me: let's talk quality.
I'm a quality and compliance manager at a billiard supply company, and honestly, that means I review basically every cloth batch that leaves our warehouse. Roughly 200+ batches a year, and in 2024 I rejected about 12% of first deliveries for issues ranging from sloppy nap direction to mislabeled wool percentages. Here's the opinion I've landed on after four years of that work: I don't care which color you pick. I care that the color is the same every single time.
Most cloth spec sheets get this wrong. They'll write “Simonis 860” or “Tournament Blue,” call it a day, and assume the rest. But color consistency across production lots is a quality specification, not a style preference. If you don't write it down, you're gambling.
Why Batch-to-Batch Color Drift Bites Buyers
Cloth is dyed in production runs. The wool blend, the dye chemistry, the water temperature—a dozen variables can shift between one run and the next. Sometimes the shift is tiny. Sometimes it isn't.
In early 2023, I approved a batch of blue cloth from a mill that I won't name. Sixty rolls came into the warehouse, and under the lights they looked fine. Then we set a roll from the new batch next to a roll from the previous one. You could see the difference without squinting: the new lot ran slightly greener. We measured it at a Delta E of roughly 3.8.
We rejected the whole batch. The mill redid it at their cost, but the delay made a dealer miss a tournament installation deadline. Six weeks of “industry standard” arguments followed. That incident changed how I think about color specifications. Consistency isn't a cosmetic detail—it's a delivery requirement.
The Standard That Actually Matters: Delta E
If you're not familiar with Delta E, it's a single number that tells you how far apart two colors are. The industry standard for brand-critical work is one I've come to rely on:
Industry standard color tolerance is Delta E < 2 for brand-critical colors. Delta E of 2–4 is noticeable to trained observers; above 4 is visible to most people. — Pantone Color Matching System guidelines
I use that as my baseline when I spec cloth. If a mill can't hold Delta E below 2 on its blue line, that cloth shouldn't have “Tournament” in the name. The tolerance might sound small, but a difference of 2–4 can be spotted by the sharpest eyes in the room—and on a tournament table under TV lights, that's exactly who's looking.
This is where Simonis 860 Tournament Blue has earned its spot on my approved list. In four years of comparing swatches under a color-corrected light, Simonis has held the standard more consistently than any other brand I've tested. That's not a marketing sentence. It's a QC observation. There's a reason you see 860 under the lights at televised events more often than not.
The practical payoff for you: if a dealer or manufacturer buys 20 rolls now and 20 more in October, you don't have to cross your fingers that they'll match. You're the customer, not the quality lab. The brand should be handling that for you.
The Simonis X1 Cleaner Is a Quality Control Tool, Not an Accessory
Here's the part of the spec sheet everyone skips: maintenance. I get it—it doesn't feel like a purchase decision. But I'm the person who sees the return rates, and I can tell you that most cloth failures aren't cloth failures. They're maintenance failures.
Worsted wool cloth is a precision surface. Chalk dust, body oil, spilled drinks—they all get pressed into the nap, and the ball stops rolling true. On a 9-foot table, that's the difference between a confident shot and a ball that just dies.
That's why I put Simonis X1 cleaner in the spec for any commercial table we supply. It's formulated for worsted wool cloth: it lifts chalk dust and oils without soaking the felt. Wet cloth loses tension and plays dead; X1 doesn't do that.
I didn't fully believe a cleaning protocol mattered until I saw what happened at a 12-table bar account a few years back. They complained about slowdown after three months. The staff was cleaning the cloth with a damp mop. We switched them to a quick routine—brush, X1, let it dry, brush again—and those same cloths were still playing consistently at 14 months. The wrong maintenance was killing the cloth, not the cloth itself.
- Brush the cloth to lift loose chalk dust.
- Apply Simonis X1 lightly across the playing surface.
- Let it dry, then brush again to restore the nap.
Price it out: one re-felt redo on a commercial table typically costs more than two years of a proper cleaning routine. The efficiency math isn't close.
Why I Standardize on a Single Brand Spec
As a quality person, I'm an efficiency person. Standardizing on a small set of proven specs is the simplest lever I have.
When a table manufacturer locks in Simonis 860 for tournament-grade tables and Simonis 760 for the home line, everything downstream gets simpler. Installers learn one cloth's stretch and nap direction. Inventory shrinks because you're not stocking six brands in three shades of green. Warranty disputes drop because you know exactly what you sold and how to maintain it.
Standardizing our cloth orders cut our review time from five days to two. Instead of auditing every batch like it was a first date, we spot-check known specs and focus on the variables that actually change.
I'll admit I second-guessed the decision for months after we made Simonis our house standard. What if the price premium was too much? What if a cheaper brand undercut us on a big bid? The quarterly quality reports settled it: cloth-related complaints dropped by about a third within a year, and most of the remaining ones were install errors, not cloth defects.
Counterarguments I Hear (and My Answers)
“The cheaper cloth plays fine.” On a home table used four hours a week? Sure, a lot of cloths play fine. Good mills make good wool-nylon blends, and I'm not going to tell you they're garbage. The question is consistency—same speed, same color, same behavior across batches. If your table gets played twice a month, that hardly matters. If you're a dealer selling to a pool hall, that's your reputation.
“I check the color with my own eyes.” So do we—under controlled light, with trained reviewers, and a colorimeter when there's a dispute. (Yes, we own one. No, you can't borrow it.) Your eyes lie to you. The lighting in a warehouse, the lighting in a bar, the blue tint of your laptop screen—they all lie. A numeric tolerance like Delta E < 2 gives you something you can actually argue with.
“Specifying a brand limits my flexibility.” Sure. That's the same way guardrails limit your driving flexibility. A house standard removes failure modes, and fewer failure modes means fewer callbacks. The most expensive table you'll ever sell is the one you have to go back to.
Bottom Line
So here's my position: stop choosing cloth colors like you're picking a paint swatch for the living room, and start treating them as quality specifications. Pick a brand and a shade that can repeat themselves, then write the maintenance product into the contract instead of an afterthought.
Simonis 860 Tournament Blue isn't just a nice color. It's a quality spec—same blue, same play, every time. And if you're still here for the iPhone speaker thing: the cotton-swab trick works. But the cloth spec is the decision that actually costs somebody money.