Sustainable Flooring Materials for Interiors

Your client wants to incorporate sustainable elements into the project you’re designing — but where do you begin? 

Eco-friendly flooring is a great place to start, offering a positive solution for the planet and your interior designs. Consider this article your introduction to sustainable flooring: the materials, the advantages, and more.

Sustainable flooring constitutes using materials that are either recycled or sustainably harvested and created.

The use of eco-friendly flooring in your interior design can go a long way if you’re trying to achieve accreditation for your design, like LEED or WELL certifications. Plus, sustainable flooring can “wow” your clients with how it looks and the money it can save them in the long run.

For a deeper dive into the world of green architecture, click here.

Cork flooring is an excellent option for sustainable interior design, offering a host of benefits while maintaining a commitment to eco-friendliness. This material is naturally harvested from the bark of cork oak trees, a process that doesn’t harm the trees, allowing them to regenerate and continue contributing to the environment.

One of cork’s standout features is its resistance to mold and mildew. This makes cork durable in damp environments and contributes to healthier indoor air quality.

Its sound-dampening qualities also make it a great choice for spaces requiring noise control or where your clients want peace and quiet.

Beyond its functional properties, cork offers physical comfort with its soft and cushioned surface. Plus, it’s customizable, coming in various easy-to-shape colors and styles.

Where to use cork: Cork can add a comfortable element to bedrooms, living rooms, or even kitchens.

Bamboo flooring is a popular choice for sustainable interior design because of its incredible durability and rapid growth cycle. With proper care, bamboo flooring can retain its beauty and functionality for years, making it a practical choice for homeowners and designers alike. 

Despite its many advantages, bamboo flooring has some drawbacks. While it’s resistant to water, it’s still sensitive to excessive moisture and humidity, which can cause it to swell or warp over time. Additionally, bamboo can be pricier than some other flooring options, particularly higher-quality or sustainably harvested varieties, but its durability and eco-friendly benefits often justify the investment for those looking to make a long-term, sustainable choice.

Where to use bamboo: Bamboo flooring is best suited for spaces with consistent moisture levels, such as offices, bedrooms, and living rooms.

Reclaimed wood is another option for sustainable interior design, blending eco-consciousness with timeless character. 

As a recycled material, reclaimed wood is inherently sustainable, giving new life to wood that might otherwise be discarded. Sourced from old buildings, barns, or factories, it reduces the demand for newly harvested timber and minimizes the embodied carbon costs of producing new wood. This makes it an ideal choice for those looking to incorporate environmentally responsible materials into their designs.

Beyond its sustainability, reclaimed wood offers unparalleled aesthetic appeal. The natural aging process imbues each piece with unique character, including weathered textures, rich patinas, and distinctive grain patterns that can’t be replicated by new wood.

Reclaimed wood’s combination of environmental benefits and inherent charm makes it a standout material for those looking to merge sustainability with style in their interior projects. 

Where to use reclaimed wood: According to Vectorworks’ interior architecture specialist, Kesoon Chance, reclaimed wood flooring is perfect for any and all living areas, giving the space unmatched character.

Another material that’s full of character is recycled or reused tiles. Made by reusing materials like glass, ceramic, or porcelain, these tiles are an example of extending the life cycle of existing resources. By repurposing materials that might otherwise end up in landfills, recycled tiles help reduce waste and minimize the environmental footprint of a project, aligning perfectly with eco-friendly design principles.

Recycled tiles can also be used to tremendous success for countertops, backsplashes, and more. Click here to learn more about designing countertops in Vectorworks Architect. 

Mosa, a Vectorworks Silver Partner, offers sustainable tiling options as well. In fact, in 2022, Mosa became the world’s first ceramic tile company to be awarded full Cradle to Cradle CertifiedÒ Gold certification for nearly its entire collection.

The certification, according to VentureWell.org, “Attempts to measure the environmental and social sustainability of your invention in five categories: material health, material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship, and social fairness.”

Where to use recycled or Mosa tiles: Recycled tiles are a welcome addition to both bathrooms and kitchens.

When choosing what flooring option is best for your client, understanding a material’s life cycle can be quite useful — from how they’re sourced, the transportation process of the materials, and its “estimated useful life.”

According to the Journal of Materials Research and Technology, lifecycle assessments offer “the opportunity to approach a product or process holistically to interpret the impacts and their causes.”

Comparing a material’s lifecycle can ultimately help you and your clients determine what material is best to use by comparing its price, longevity, installation cost and more. They’re also important when applying for accreditations like ones previously mentioned in this article, the Forest Stewardship Council GmbH, or the Zero Forest Deforestation label.

After you’ve landed on an eco-friendly flooring option for your interior, you can begin designing and documenting your project in Vectorworks Architect. Below, you’ll find some of the features that will help get you started.

Using Vectorworks’ Resource Manager, you can browse an extensive library of sustainable flooring options to use in your design. Not only do these manufacturer-made resources offer realistic representations for your renderings, but they also contain data for documenting your interior designs.

With Worksheets, Reports, and other data-driven features in Vectorworks, you can calculate the surface area of your eco-friendly flooring materials. With functional formulas in worksheets, you can then extract data, create reports, and manage installation with ease.

For more on leveraging data to meet all your design needs, click here.

There’s also the Vectorworks Embodied Carbon Calculator (VECC). This custom worksheet is pre-formatted to help calculate a project’s embodied carbon levels.