Today, Interface, Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet, announced it is entering the hard surface flooring category to complement its broad range of modular carpet tiles. This category expansion will help the company better serve architects and designers, end-user customers, and flooring dealers with a fully integrated collection of hard and soft tiles that seamlessly fit together in Interface's modular design system.
Developed with thoughtful consideration for design, performance and sustainability best practices, Interface's first curated collection of Luxury Vinyl Tiles (LVT) works seamlessly with its carpet tiles. This allows customers to explore new design possibilities and create rich textural experiences across virtually all types of applications.
"Our customers know they can count on Interface to deliver innovative, trend-setting carpet tile designs, and we know they often want or need to mix hard and soft flooring in spaces they create for their clients. We're ready to bring our design expertise and systems thinking to hard surfaces, making it much easier for our customers to work with a single modular flooring partner," said Jay Gould, President and Chief Operating Officer of Interface.
Design Trends & Inspiration
Several commercial design trends are playing a role in Interface's expansion into modular resilient flooring. The transformation of the modern workplace is dominating corporate office design conversations today. It is driving fresh thinking around the use of mixed materials to create zones for different types of work, whether focused, collaborative or spaces that have more of a residential feel, blurring the lines between home and work.
In corporate office, hospitality, education and other commercial segments, designers are bringing in varied textures, colors and patterns inspired by distressed, reclaimed and exposed materials, and looking to use lighter tones in flooring to increase light reflection, applying biophilic design theories to their spaces. These design trends are reflected in Interface's new LVT product offerings.
"This is an exciting time for our company and marks the first time in more than 10 years that Interface has globally expanded into a new category," continued Gould. "Creating a substantial market presence with complementary hard surface products is a key priority in our strategic growth plan. Our new LVT products are already resonating strongly with customers in our initial market tests over the past six months. We look forward to better serving current and new customers with our integrated flooring solutions."
Interface's First Resilient Flooring Offering
Interface will debut its first resilient flooring product with a new LVT collection, called Level Set™, globally this year. It features a range of 25cm x 1m planks and 50cm x 50cm squares that mirror classic natural and textured woodgrains and stones.
Customers can work with Interface to specify a seamless, integrated system of Skinny Planks™ and square carpet tiles, plus new LVT options, coming together with a precise fit, side by side. Interface has engineered its LVT offerings to compatible height with its carpet tiles in a modular design system (4.5mm total thickness), thereby providing better coverage of irregularities in the subfloor, lower sound transference from floor to floor and, most importantly, the ability to effortlessly move from hard to soft flooring without transition strips or layering.
The Level Set collection will be available in select markets in early 2017 with additional global market expansion planned throughout the year. Interested parties can obtain further details about placing orders with their local account representatives and/or visit this website.
Commitment to Sustainability
Over the past 23 years, Interface has transformed the carpet tile industry, driving innovation in processes and materials to develop a more sustainable approach to manufacturing. Through its Mission Zero® goal to eliminate any negative environmental impact it may have by 2020, Interface has led the industry to create sustainability best practices. Likewise, Interface intends to bring its focus on sustainability and transparency to the hard flooring category, and will challenge the industry once again to improve the sustainability of existing products and to create lasting, positive impacts on this market segment.
With its initial entry into resilient flooring, Interface has been purposeful in selecting and creating products with materials and recycling in mind, including a commitment to deliver Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for all of its hard flooring products. The tiles are produced with a controlled material stream to ensure that they can be recycled at end of life through Interface's ReEntry® recycling program. These recycled materials will ultimately feed into recycled content backing, including Interface's GlasBac®RE recycled backing product.