The lino of beauty: the ultimate kitsch comeback
All hail the imaginative re-embrace of linoleum — whose colourful, eco-chic adaptability is a springboard for fun“I sort of love that linoleum has a bad rap,” says Leah Ring, principal designer at Los Angeles-based studio Another Human. “I like taking ideas and turning them on their head.” Ring regularly uses the composite floor covering in her colourful interiors projects, despite the fact that some clients associate it with “old tacky kitchens”. But when she shows people visual references of what the material can do, they are often shocked. “You can make lino really beautiful,” says Ring.
She is one of a growing number of interior designers prompting a revival in lino, turning to the oft-dismissed material for its versatility, durability, sustainability and fun.
Patented in the 1860s by British inventor Frederick Walton, linoleum combines linseed oil (derived from flax), pine resin and ground cork applied to natural cloth (today’s ingredient combinations vary, and can include additional sawdust and mineral fillers). Its name comes from the Latin for flax (linum) and oil (oleum), and its easy-to-clean, hard-wearing abilities made it a popular choice for domestic kitchens, schools and hospitals.
The rise of vinyl, a low-cost plastic alternative with comparable qualities, led to linoleum’s decline in the latter half of the 20th century; the conflation between the two saw both overlooked as cheap and — wrongly, for linoleum — environmentally unfriendly. In the last two years, flooring manufacturers including Tarkett and Forbo reached carbon-negative status with their linoleum ranges.
But there is another, more exhilarating draw. “It allows you to get these crazy saturated colours in a space,” says Ring, that aren’t always possible with other materials. She recently covered an entire lower ground floor of a home in the LA neighbourhood of Silver Lake in “bubblegum pink” lino — including the bedroom. “Those were particularly fun clients,” she says.
In her own home in Yucca Valley, a desert town in southern California, Ring used a chequerboard kitchen floor in lime green and aqua blue. “I really got to flex my colour muscles,” says Ring. What’s more, unlike stone or ceramic floor tiles, linoleum feels “soft and warm”, particularly when barefoot.
It’s a sentiment echoed by London-based interior designer Laura Stephens, who installed a bespoke lino floor in the hallway of a west London home as her client “worried that tiles would feel too cold underfoot”. The floor’s pattern nods to Victorian tiled hallways, while its colours pick up on tones in the wallpaper, paint and lighting fixtures.
“Lino often gets typecast as only suitable for kitchens, but I love using it in unexpected ways,” Stephens says, adding that the new hallway floor has given the space “its own bold character”.
Meanwhile, designers such as London-based Martino Gamper and Parisian studio Hauvette & Madani have also used the material beyond floors to impressive effect: on cabinetry, walls and furniture.
Swedish interior designer Beata Heuman has long been a fan of linoleum, having grown up with it at home, and regularly includes it in projects. She believes the material is more commonplace and less stigmatised in Sweden, whereas in the UK, people associate it with “hospitals and schools”. When she established her practice in London 12 years ago, she had to persuade clients to use lino — “the fact that people didn’t really get it just made me like it even more,” she says. Now, she says, it has become “a lot more popular”.
Heuman’s use of the material is rooted in domesticity and nostalgia; she loves its “retro cool vibe”. When she renovated her cottage in southern Sweden, she drew inspiration from the kitchen in her parents’ house, creating red and cream chequerboard lino flooring. She recently used a dark green and pink version for the bathroom floor of her London home.
For Mike Tuck, founder of his eponymous London architecture practice, lino is a “natural super-material”. He often suggests it in home projects as a lower-carbon alternative to polished concrete or micro-cement, as it can achieve a “similar monolithic feel”.
In the new kitchen-dining area of a renovated London house, Mike Tuck Studio installed a minimalist, warm-grey linoleum floor — demonstrating the material’s ability to strike a subtle and refined presence.
“The clients were nervous it might feel like a school corridor, but within weeks they were championing it to friends and neighbours,” Tuck says. Linoleum, he concludes, is “due a renaissance”.
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