Home Decor: Environmentally Responsible Flooring

Andrew: Leather is great for so many reasons. It is durable, you can dress it up or down and when classically cut, it never goes out of style. These things also apply to leather in home furnishings. Diversity is really the key when designing with leather. There are many styles and finishes available. And most recently, we have seen really innovative designs with leather in home flooring.

Today, I am at the Torly’s showroom to have a look at these innovative new leather floors and to learn more about this fantastic product. Tino, thanks for taking the time to talk to me today.

Tino: No problem. Let me show you around.

Andrew: Thanks!

These samples are really beautiful Tino. I never could have imagined that leather floors could look this good.

Tino: Thank you Andrew! Actually, we got our inspiration from Italian leather from the feel and the quality of Italian leather. We have actually 12 different styles and just a few here. This is Novara black, this is Genova Cogniac.

Andrew: Now there is no doubt in my mind that these are beautiful flooring options. and with a cork backing, they are obviously going to be very comfortable on the foot. But the question still remains, how durable are they?

Tino: Well it is not the first time that I am asked that question. Actually, they are extremely durable. We used a 2.7-millimeter top layer of leather and on top of that. We also have a water based finish. A very hard wearing water based finish. So that gives us the warranty that these probably will perform very well in terms of traffic so much so that we offer 25 year residential ware warranty.

Andrew: So Tino, how did these floors differ from the leather floors that have been made in the past.

Tino: Actually, the floors used to be made in terms of glue dung only.

Andrew: Permanent?

Tino: And customized permanent which made them really expensive.

Andrew: Right.

Tino: Now with these new floor mat and we have tiles 15x15 tiles and 7.5x45 planks, you have a much more affordable way of using leather flooring. And actually, you can do mix and match with the two design and with the two shapes.

Andrew: Oh, so you can combine them for a pattern.

Tino: That is right.

Andrew: Nice.

Tino: The other special characteristic about this floor is that we use a glueless system called the unique click system and you can click it and unclick it. You can move it from one area of your home or even to a different home to your cottage. You can do that three times under warranty.

Andrew: So it is not only beautiful and durable, it is easy to install.

Tino: Absolutely.

Andrew: Fantastic. Tino, when renovating their homes, a lot of homeowners now are not only looking for products that suit their needs but also things that have an environmental responsibility, so how green are leather floors?

Tino: I am really glad you asked me that. Actually our leather floors really match our three R’s, reduce, renew and reuse. And to start with, this is the raw material we use for our leather floors. So with just pieces of leather that comes from the production of upholstery, belts or shoes like in this case.

Andrew: Okay.

Tino: So we are using a raw material that otherwise would end up in a landfill. As I showed you before, we used an HDF core. An HDF is made of a soft wood that is very fast growth. It comes from managed forests in Europe. And thirdly, we use a cork backing and this is also a renewable resource and we actually use the leftovers from the production of wine stoppers and shoe soles, anything you can think of that is made of cork. We used the leftovers, we grind them up, and we do the cork backing.

In terms of renewability, our product is very easy to maintain, vacuum clean, dust mop that is all we need to do. But let us say you have an accident, something sharp and really heavy falls on your floor, we have a tool to replace that. We create a tool that enables you to replace a board or a tile in the middle of the room without any additional power tools or any dust or anything like that. You do that in 15 minutes, you put the new one in, and the pro