New Material: Furniture Linoleum

Arco’s love affair with natural materials stretches back to the company’s birth. Now, we add Forbo Furniture Linoleum to the mix. This biobased material from Forbo provides new possibilities as part of Arco’s interest in innovation and sustainability. All in keeping with Arco’s commitment to the environment for this generation and the next.

Forbo Furniture Linoleum offers the unique combination of a semi-matt finish with a warm, fine texture. It is a distinctive covering, and just like wood, furniture linoleum is a bio-based, natural material. Furniture Linoleum leaves no fingerprints, is antistatic, and pleasant as a surface to write on. Over time, Furniture Linoleum ages in a pleasing way, like leather.

Furniture Linoleum is first available as an option within the Slim family and the Essential Rectangular. You can order it in every color within the Forbo Furniture Linoleum collection–from bold orange to warm grey to soothing green.

Sustainability 

What makes linoleum special is that it is created from raw materials obtained from its natural habitat, right where it grows and renews, often in just 12 months. Flax is an annual crop that can be harvested just like wheat or corn. Extracting rosin is a continuous process, while wood flour, a waste material from the timber industry, is derived from European production forests. Limestone is available in abundance. Linoleum ingredients take more CO2 from the air than we need for our production process. As a result, cradle-to-gate furniture linoleum is capturing carbon.

Material characteristics 

Besides the advantages described above, Furniture Linoleum has specific characteristics of which customers should be aware and for which Arco cannot be held responsible, as they are intrinsic to the material (and claims regarding these issues will not be accepted).

Furniture Linoleum has a black backing (a thin layer of paper). The lighter the color of the linoleum, the more visible it is (on the side).

There may be slight variations in color from sample to sample and from product to product.

The material is ‘alive’ (think of the surface of leather, for example) and has several associated characteristics. Small marks or streaks may appear in the material.

Dents, streaks, stains, or shiny marks can also occur during use. In our opinion, this gives the material its character, and the traces of use give the material and the product their unique identity.

Note the furniture linoleum is +/- 2 mm thick. The product will therefore be +/- 2 mm ‘higher’ when, for example, veneer is used. Be careful when combining products in different versions (e.g., Slim & Slim Flex).