The Environmental Impact of Your Flooring

When it comes time to choose new floors, you want options that are attractive, durable, and affordable. But in today’s world, the environmental impacts of flooring materials also deserve careful consideration.

At V4 Wood Flooring, we specialise in beautiful, sustainable flooring options, and with the release of our Cortejo Luxury Cork Flooring range, we thought it was a perfect time to delve deeper into the greenest choices for your home’s foundations.

Steering Clear of Carpets

If you’re seeking an eco-friendly flooring type for your home, avoid carpeting at all costs. Among all flooring materials, carpet, especially wool options, consistently ranks as the worst environmental offender.

About Wool and Nylon

The levels of methane gas emitted by sheep when they digest their food account for wool’s hefty carbon footprint. Nylon options also make up over 70% of the carpet industry. Chosen for its durability and resilience, nylon is actually derived from crude oils.

It All Comes Down to Lifecycle

Manufacturing methods aside, the carpet’s foreshortened life cycle is another red flag, with most natural and synthetic fibre carpets lasting around a decade. This leads to environmental pressures when disposing of them.

Homeowners should choose flooring with a more sustainable life cycle, from its creation to its eventual disposal.

What About Tile and Marble?

Ceramic and stone tiles occupy a middle ground on the scale of most to least environmentally damaging. As materials, they are incredibly strong and long-lasting, but their weight ultimately holds them back, requiring much more energy to transport than lighter options.

Low Impact With Plant-Powered Floors

Studies have consistently shown that flooring materials derived from plants including engineered wood and cork have the lowest environmental impacts across a wide range of categories.

The raw materials for plant-based flooring come from trees and agricultural crops that absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, releasing oxygen and effectively storing carbon. As long as the timber used is sourced from properly managed forests, then the impact of cultivation on the surrounding ecosystem will also be significantly reduced.

Plus, at the end of their long and useful lives, wood and cork floors can be burned for energy production or composted, completing their low-impact life cycle.

Engineered Wood Flooring – Natural Beauty That Lasts

Our engineered wood flooring celebrates the unparalleled richness of natural wood while conserving resources. We use a core of responsibly sourced birch, pine, or poplar plywood, layered with a top ‘lamella’ of solid oak or walnut. This reduces the thickness required by 60% compared to solid wood alternatives, increasing yield from each tree we harvest.

Finished with low-VOC oils and lacquers, our precision-engineered boards exhibit all the visual warmth and fine texture of traditional hardwood. Their stability and resilience make them suitable for almost any room, with or without underfloor heating.

With proper care, our sustainable engineered wood floors will last for generations.

Laminate Flooring – Hardwood Looks for Less

For a budget-friendly wood floor alternative, explore our laminate flooring range. Starting with ethically-harvested pine, compressed into a durable HDF core, we finish each of our boards with high-definition prints, taken from real timber, to replicate natural oak.

Laminate needs no glue for installation and maintains excellent indoor air quality, thanks to its low VOC emissions. It is also extremely hard-wearing, water-resistant, and easy to clean.

Cork Flooring – Sustainable, Comfortable, Quiet

Made from the harvested bark of Mediterranean cork oak trees, our cork flooring brings sustainability full circle. The trees are never harmed or felled during the harvesting process, only the bark is taken – and this rich layer replenishes itself after each cutting. Our production process also recycles cork byproducts, making sure nothing taken goes to waste.

Naturally insulating and shock-absorbing, cork keeps interiors comfortable all year round. Its integral softness also makes it warmer underfoot than tile and quieter than solid wood.

An all-natural flooring that is gentle on your feet and the Earth. That’s the beauty of cork.

Put Your Greenest Foot Forward With V4

At V4 Wood Flooring, we are committed to providing flooring options that align with your values Our extensive selection of engineered wood, laminate, and cork flooring gives you plenty of stylish and eco-friendly choices for your home.