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Photo: Mariko Reed
Moon Gate House

The versatility of sustainable flooring adds beauty and comfort throughout an entire home.

Bedrooms are often the last holdout for wall-to-wall carpet but cork maintains comfort and tranquility, as it is warm, soft, and quiet. Perfect for bare feet!

Cork is also clean as it does not hold onto dirt like carpet, especially when a wood floor finish is added, like in this flooring. The bathroom cork is a burl pattern that looks like stone and was chosen to match the bathtub.

Bamboo and traditional wood were used in the formal living room, giving these highly used rooms a sleek durability.

 

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Ecology Center Library 2
Ecology Center Library 1

The Ecology Center chose bamboo for their library because its rapidly replenishing nature and other sustainability aspects fit with their organizational mission of reducing environmental impacts. The wood-like bamboo material creates a cozy space while maintaining a conventional library appearance.

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Ultra-Modern Home Office
Ultra-Modern Home Office

This cork flooring’s bold pattern suits its ultra-modern work area, while offering a warm counterbalance to the industrial chic look of the surrounding concrete and steel urban loft. Cork is also slightly more resistant to damage from rolling chairs, springing back from impacts, compared to wood flooring which can get torn up. Regardless of flooring material, a pad underneath a rolling chair minimizes damage and extends floor life.

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Vertical Grain Bamboo Floor
Vertical Grain Bamboo Floor

This vertical grain bamboo floor was easily installed by the customer, creating a welcoming room with a fresh look. 

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Diamond Checkerboard Floors
Diamond Checkerboard Floors

These rooms show how a unique design and layout can be applied in different settings.

For the kitchen, the cork floor tiles and design were chosen from dozens of colors. Flooring Alternatives did the custom installation to ensure a good match with the room.

Another customer chose a similar maroon and cream patterned cork flooring for their studio. In this case, they did their own installation.

Flooring Alternatives can arrange custom installations of any design. Please see Our Services section or contact us for more information.

 

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Architect: Cat Chang / Photo: Pamela Palma
Reclaimed Oak Kitchen

This remodeled kitchen in San Francisco combines cork and reclaimed wood. The lighter part of the flooring in is oak that was previously part of an old barn. The darker part of the floor throughout the rest of the kitchen is cork.

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YHLA Architects, Andy Carpentier Designer
Miner’s Cabin Remodel

Remodel project of an historic 1866 miner’s cabin in the Sierra foothills; the designer aimed to stay authentic to its origins, including the wood flooring. These before-and-after shots show the remarkable transformation using reclaimed wide-plank Douglas Fir flooring.

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M Interiors Design
Chevron Cork Pattern

This cork floor has a dynamic chevron pattern and was finished with a custom stain and installation.

 

 

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Cork bedroom flooring
Cork Attic Bedroom

This bedroom is situated over a garage which makes it cold in winter. The cork floor provides warmth in both temperature and appearance. 

Cork also looks nice next to other materials, as shown in the transition between the bedroom and the hardwood flooring of the hallway. 

This homeowner now wishes she had installed cork flooring in more rooms! 

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Bamboo poles in a forest
Bamboo poles

A member of the grass family, bamboo provides the natural beauty and feel of a wood floor yet produces hardwood fiber much more quickly than trees. In fact, bamboos are some of the fastest growing plants in the world. Bamboo can shoot up several feet per day and is the tallest kind of grass in the world.

On an established plant, bamboo poles mature in about five years. The poles are then removed to allow the rest of the plant to continue to grow. Bamboo benefits from its harvest as the plant’s energy then gets redirected to grow new replacement shoots as well as to the other poles left behind. Clumping bamboo stays close to its point of origin, whereas running bamboo spreads out far and can cover a wide area.

Bamboo only blooms around once every hundred years. The shoots that originated from the same bamboo plant will all bloom at the same time, even if the shoots have been separated and moved to different parts of the world. However, once the plant creates blossoms and seeds, its lifecycle is complete and it dies.

Bamboo can survive toxic environments and its dense and extensive root system absorbs contaminants in water and soil. The use of bamboo or other plants to clean up soil, air, and water is called phytoremediation.

After the Vietnam war, extensive clear-cutting of forests was undertaken to pay for the war. As a pioneer plant, bamboo helped reclaim the land by stabilizing the soil.

Bamboo has been used as a self-renewing building material for thousands of years. In China, the origin of timber bamboo, when a house needed repair, the bamboo grown next to the house was harvested as needed. By the time new material is needed to replace old bamboo on the house, the bamboo poles growing nearby will have matured.

The long-established bamboo economy and building tradition also included everything from fishing rods, textiles, and weapons, to musical instruments, fuel, and suspension bridges. It is also still used commonly in cooking and for furniture. Because it is flexible, yet has a tensile strength greater than steel, bamboo is often used as scaffolding and there is a resurgence of interest in using it for the construction of houses.

Shifting our consumption from trees to bamboo slows the depletion of the earth's forests, giving them a chance to recover from decades of mismanagement. Sustainable harvesting methods used with such a rapidly producing plant make bamboo the ultimate renewable resource. Bamboo is versatile and can be used to make many types of products (including flooring) and, as nearly every part of the plant can be used, there is little waste leftover.

There are also native bamboos in South America and the swampy area of South Eastern North America but none are good for flooring.

See our products pages for bamboo flooring.

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Cork oak tree harvesting
Cork oak tree

Evolving to withstand the harsh conditions of the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean Cork Oak (Quercus Suber) developed its thick, spongy bark for protection from the forces of nature. Composed of 200 million air cells per cubic inch, this amazing bark protects its tree from fungus and fire, and insulates it against temperature extremes. The cork oak benefits from having its bark (the cork) harvested every 9-15 years. Since the trees go on living for centuries, this symbiotic relationship between people and nature makes cork the ultimate sustainable material.

Harvesting is done in sections, not all at once, and the bark is pulled off the tree in half circles. Cork material not used to make wine stoppers is pressed into blocks which are sliced to make cork flooring.

In the past century, cork has been used in architectural masterpieces such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water and Walter Gropius’ residence (both circa 1937), as well as schools, libraries (including the Library of Congress), and art museums. Warm and resilient, cork flooring is perfect for even the most highly-traveled areas. With a properly maintained finish, your cork floor can last for over a hundred years!

See our products pages for cork flooring.

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Wool from sheep
Wool from sheep

Shorn from sheep, wool is 100% natural, renewable, chemical free, and completely biodegradable. Wool carpet offers a classic and natural beauty that is soft to touch. The unique structure and naturally occurring proteins make wool stain and crush resistant, providing superior, long lasting practical performance. Wool is naturally fire resistant and its moisture absorbency can pull humidity out of the air.

Unlike wild sheep, the year-round growth of wool on domestic sheep is not typically shed. If the wool isn’t removed each year, the sheep could suffer from reduced mobility, sight, and heat stress in hot weather.

Because of their wool, sheep have a natural defense against fire, dirt, pollen, bacteria, moisture, mold, and other harmful pollutants. These features of wool make it a great choice as a carpet material.

Also see our products pages on wool carpeting.

 

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Flax seeds and linseed oil
Flax seeds and linseed oil

Marmoleum is a brand of natural linoleum made by Forbo Flooring. The linoleum name comes from the Latin “linum” (flax) and “oleum” (oil).

To make linoleum, the seeds of the flax plant first get pressed into linseed oil. The oil oxidizes (absorbs oxygen) and is mixed with pine resin (called “rosin”), creating linoleum cement. The linoleum cement then gets mixed with wood flour, finely ground limestone, and various pigments. After a final mixing process, the resulting granules get spread out onto a sheet. The last step for the linoleum sheet is to get pressed onto a jute mesh backing and final finishes added – it is then ready to use as flooring. The continued oxidation of the linseed oil will actually increase the durability of Marmoleum over time.

The flax and jute plants are both harvested annually. The wood flour is waste from the timber industry. Because of its natural ingredients and modern manufacturing process, Marmoleum is a CO2 neutral product range as measured from cradle to gate. See the Forbo website for full environmental product information: www.forbo.com

Originally patented in Britain in 1860, all-natural linoleum was a hugely popular product throughout Europe until the industry collapsed due to the outbreak of World War I. The early 1920s saw a comeback of this resilient product in planking, tile and parquet formats, which was ended by World War II. With the resurgence of interest in renewable flooring products in the 1980s, natural linoleum has made its most recent comeback and looks and performs better than ever. It is usually used in bathrooms and kitchens.

See our products pages for details on Marmoleum flooring at Flooring Alternatives.

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Hardwood Forest
Hardwood

Sustainable wood flooring comes from tropical or domestic wood species that are certified to have been harvested using responsible forestry practices, or have been recycled, reclaimed or plantation grown.

Our certified suppliers must show that their wood comes from well-managed forests, adhere to strict guidelines regarding harvesting, respect the rights of indigenous people, and promote biological diversity and economic health in the region. Earth-friendly and beautiful tree wood floors come from responsibly forested, reclaimed or salvaged, or farmed wood. Typical species include American Cherry, Maple, Oak, Tigerwood and Brazilian Cherry.

See our products pages for information on FSC and other certified woods.

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