A Tile of Two Cities
Let’s start with the name NY+LON Streets™. We love it. It’s clever, and the meaning is staring you right in the face. The collection takes its name from the carpet’s core material and two of the world’s most iconic cities – New York City and London.
Urban exploration takes on a new meaning with NY+LON Streets™, giving designers and clients a new look to work with. The patterns are inspired by facets of what give NYC and London such deep character – aging architecture, sophistication, and a diverse, modern, and vibrant culture. The colours and patterns reflect the cities’ personalities, and each pattern introduces its own mood into the space. With a focus on mimicking the outdoors in built environments, they strive to bring a familiar connection to the workspace.
“In today’s increasingly digital world, people crave the organic connections that make them feel comfortable and impart a sense of belonging,” says Zubair. “With the onset of the pandemic, this is even more true. While workers have been returning to the office, there is still that longing for those familiar streets.” Each range within this collection derives its design from familiar, almost ubiquitous elements found on those streets.
The random patterns, colors, and materials that give the NYC and London urban landscape its character is what the collection is trying to emulate. The ranges – Wheler Street™, Old Street™, Dover Street™ and Reade Street™ – interpret these known urban textures, such as asphalt, worn metal, and distressed pavement, in a variety of shapes and sizes. Whilst Mercer Street™ embraces an unconventional grid pattern that Broome Street™ helps pop up with contemporary colour. The collection hints at urban patterns that you’re familiar with, invoking a sense of belonging.
Designers and clients alike love a good story. Not only does the collection reflect the thought process behind the design, but helps add a new dimension to the overall look and feel in the space. It competes with yet compliments the furniture in the space, collectively adding color and personality to the environment.
Chis: I love the story behind it, and where it gets its DNA from. I Instantly recognised some of the materials that they’ve replicated on their patterns. I love that it’s inspired by the landscape and it helps us as designers to tell the story better, especially when pitching concepts to clients. You’ve got some really bold and exciting palettes to work with.
Nadine: It’s such a different take on urban inspired design. We often overlook these designs or take them for granted, so it’s great to be able to bring this experience inside and help people connect with the outdoors. I like the colours and textures and believe a lot of people will subconsciously relate to it and enjoy being around these carpet tiles. Bringing products like these into the workspace motivates people to come to the office, which is needed now more than ever.
Street Smart and Sustainable
With Interface carpet tiles, there’s more than meets the eye. A single carpet tile from this collection is the result of years of research and development considering both design and environmental impact.
To start with, NY+LON Streets™ products are carbon neutral across their full product life cycle through Interface’s third party verified Carbon Neutral Floors™ program. Going one step further, NY+LON Streets™ comes with the CQuest™Bio backing as standard, really adding up the sustainability points. Across the collection, a minimum of 87.7% of each tile is made with recycled and bio-based content. The NY+LON Streets™ collection offers six different products in eight different colours. That’s 48 different patterns for you to choose from! Each style is named after a street in NYC and London, and primarily designed to reflect a design element characteristic of those streets. Hands down our favorite among those is Broome Street, which wonderfully shows off the prismatic glass that is unique to that location.
To create a truly unique feel, NY+LON Streets™ can be combined with the Brushed Lines range of LVT for a luxurious urban design. Brushed Lines has its own set of merits to stand confidently on, with seamless modularity meaning you can confidently mix and match the collections avoiding any transition strips. The finishes within the Brushed Lines collection evoke the familiar qualities of hard surfaces, with a light-capturing quality that sparkles on the floor – you have 20 beautiful colours to choose from that include timeless grey tones, such as Alabaster and Kohl, or warmer ones like Blush and Honey.
The Brushed Lines collection shares a similar design mindset as NY+LON Streets, also taking its inspiration from the outdoors but from a more industrial angle. While NY+LON Streets™ has an urban take on bringing the outdoors in, Brushed Lines focuses on emphasising the more organic elements that make up our built environments. A subtle brushed steel finish is perfectly balanced with a versatile colour palette. When both products are used together, they balance each other out, and as an LVT product, it certainly brings the luxury quotient to flooring design. Both collections complement each other seamlessly, and by combining NY+LON Streets with Brushed Lines, you can take advantage of the ashlar installation method to create a truly urban look.
If you’re concerned about losing out sustainability points by using LVT, then fear not. Brushed Lines is also a carbon neutral collection, contains 39% recycled content and comes with SoundChoice™ backing as standard, formulated for superior noise reduction, offering you best-in-class performance for reduced impact sound and floor to floor sound transmission.
Chris: As designers we want to push the boundaries of interior design, and we try and err away from neutral tones. We usually rely on the furniture to drive the colour. But with Brushed Lines we really have a large spectrum to work with. Interface shows us that carpets have really evolved and matured over the years. I especially love how they’ve got some character and personality. I’m always finding subliminal ways to design warm and fun work environments for companies and their people to work in.
Nadine: It’s got just the right amount of softness as well in the backing – not too soft that you sink into, but you can tell it absorbs the impact and sound when you walk on it. And that colour range! Just the freedom to mix and match gives you limitless new ways of designing. As designers we tend to choose patterns over solid colours because the latter show signs of discoloration over time. It helps to have more patterns to choose from.
Our Thoughts
Not only is Interface’s latest collection a modern work of art, it has the sustainability credentials to present itself as a worthy investment into any built environment. In the quest for bringing the outdoors inside, this is a product worth considering, with a price not as high as you might expect.
Chris: Carpets are so much more interesting these days, and this collection proves it. The modular geometry makes it even more interesting. It’s got all the hallmarks of a product well suited for a project or client looking to be WELL certified. The price point is decent too. If you look at how much innovation has come out from the flooring industry, it’s a reasonable amount and can be justified to a client easily.
If I had to pick one outstanding feature, I would point to how well Interface have designed the patterns to look like real life architectural features on the streets of London and NYC. It’s these little connections that delight you. I’d recommend to keep developing these colours because the market moves fast and these can become old really quickly.
Nadine: It’s got a lovely Industrial look that is just right. It’s not an easy look to pull off and can be overwhelming a lot of times. The design really makes you think, “Huh, I’ve seen this somewhere”. It helps to have products that add some excitement to the space, and this is just the right dose of it.
Longevity, durability, maintenance, acoustics – Interface checks all the boxes here. I personally think the CQuest™Bio backing is the most impressive feature and shows off Interface’s technology perfectly. The price is slightly higher but not prohibitively. Definitely worth it for the design, and I can see a client buying into the story and sustainability value. It’ll last a lifetime as well, so why not invest in something great!
