For linoleum makers, it's something of a bittersweet joke: A man walks
into a flooring store and says he wants to buy linoleum for his kitchen.
No problem, says the store clerk. Over here we have all kinds of vinyl
flooring.
"It's amazing," says Frank O'Neill, publisher of Floor Focus magazine. "Even dealers you'd think would know better use vinyl and linoleum interchangeably." In truth, the two couldn't be more different. Where vinyl flooring is a synthetic product made of chlorinated petrochemicals, linoleum is produced from all-natural ingredients. Where vinyl will melt if a lighted match or cigarette lands on it, linoleum can't. And where most vinyl patterns are printed into the surface,
linoleum's colors go all the way through. "As linoleum wears, different layers of color are gradually revealed," says Duo Dickinson, an
architect in Madison, Connecticut, who has also used the material on
backsplashes and countertops. "It can be quite beautiful." Durability is
another of linoleum's attributes; some floors have survived 30 to 40
years in tough commercial environments. "It seems to last forever," Dickinson says.
Amazingly, linoleum's makeup and manufacture have hardly changed since an Englishman named Frederick Walton patented the product in 1863. The story goes that he got the idea from the leathery skin of oxidized linseed oil that forms on paint. Walton eventually perfected a mix of linseed oil, cork dust, wood flour, tree resins, ground limestone, and pigments — the same recipe used by linoleum makers today — and figured out how to press it onto a jute backing. Then he gave his concoction its name, combining the Latin words for flax (linum), the source of linseed oil, and oil (oleum).
Made in sheets, tiles, or even decorative area "rugs" and stuck to the floor with adhesive, linoleum became a favorite floor covering in
stores, restaurants, and kitchens, where its smooth, water-resistant
surface made cleaning less of a chore. But, when cheaper vinyl flooring became available in 1947, people began turning away from drab, old-fashioned linoleum. Says Frank O'Neill: "Frankly, it looked pretty
lousy."
But now linoleum is surging back. The Dutch linoleum maker Forbo
Industries, which holds 90 percent of the $40 million U.S. linoleum market, has seen sales jump by more than 30 percent over the last two years. Domco, a Canadian maker of vinyl flooring, plunged into linoleum in 1997 in response to requests from architects and specifiers. That same year, in what many see as the surest sign of linoleum's renewed popularity, vinyl-flooring giant Armstrong bought the world's second-largest linoleum maker, DLW (Deutsche Linoleum Werke), reentering a market it had left for dead in the 1970s.
Why the renewed interest? Color, for one thing. Today, linoleum comes in
a Crayola box of vibrant hues, a far cry from the muddy offerings
available before World War II. And new factory-applied sealer coats
protect those colors against dirt and stains.
No matter what its color, a growing number of architects and designers
regard linoleum as "green," environmentally friendly flooring. "From a resource standpoint, it's great," says Environmental Building News editor Alex Wilson, who last year installed a linoleum floor in the kitchen and bath area at the newsletter's offices in Brattleboro, Vermont. "It's made from natural, largely renewable, materials, and there are no environmental toxins involved in its manufacturing or disposal."
It's also a natural choice for vintage houses. Dean and Lauren Gallant — owners of a 93-year-old house in Belmont, Massachusetts, that This Old House renovated in 1993 — put linoleum in their laundry room, mudroom, and one of the bathrooms. "The original butler's pantry had it, and it was still in reasonably good shape," says Dean Gallant. "So we said, 'Well, if it lasted that long, why not do it again?'"
