When Did Linoleum Get So Luxe?

FOR DECADES linoleum has been shorthand for downmarket and drab, the stuff of dingy, unrenovated kitchens and hospital corridors. But lately that bad rap is fading, thanks to creative, environmentally conscious designers who are approaching the material with fresh eyes. In the linoleum renaissance, the colours are rich and sophisticated, the patterns unexpected. In cabinetry and furnishings as well as underfoot, these new, elevated versions argue persuasively that the utilitarian workhorse can deliver practicality with panache.

Patented in the 1860s by English inventor Frederick Walton, “linoleum was actually quite fashionable and cutting edge when it was created,” explained Alexandra Lange, a design critic and author of five books on 20th century design including “Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall.” That popularity, she added, endured for over a century. By the 1920s, companies like Armstrong Flooring (which no longer produces linoleum, but was a major player throughout the 20th century) offered hundreds of designs, a tempting menu of textures, hues and patterns that ranged from simple marble swirls to Persian “carpets.” But by the 1990s, attitudes—at least in America—shifted, leaving lino in limbo. “Around 2000, you started to see a fetishisation of luxury and ‘natural’ materials like stone and wood,” said Ms. Lange.

Despite its cut-rate reputation—and the way it is unfairly lumped together with plastic products like laminate counters and vinyl flooring—linoleum remains one of the “greenest” materials on the interiors market. Made from organic components like cork dust, linseed oil, and jute, it can be easily renewable and recyclable. Also, said Ms. Lange, lino is light and inherently soft—as low-impact on the body as it is on the planet.

Daniel Rabin and Annie Ritz of And And And Studio, a Los Angeles design firm, say environmental motives were among the reasons they began experimenting with linoleum as a cabinet veneer in 2018. “Because of the rules around VOCs, painting cabinets is almost a non-option in California these days—the paints that are truly hard-wearing just can’t be used,” explained Mr. Rabin. “[Coloured] lino performs almost the same way, while also hiding fingerprints and being super durable.”

At a midcentury home in Los Angeles’s Silver Lake neighbourhood the duo chose furniture-grade linoleum by Forbo—the Switzerland-based brand preferred by all the designers we spoke with—to clad both the kitchen cabinets and the walls running along a curving butler’s pantry and powder room. While many other so-called “modern” finishes lean hard and cold, “the haptic quality, the touch of [linoleum], is warm and soft and matte,” said Mr. Rabin. “It has this beautiful way of interacting with light and sound.”

In London, Malcolm Weir and Tom Jarvis of the kitchen workshop West & Reid have taken to using linoleum on everything from custom cabinetry to their own office desks. “As soon as clients touch it, they get it—especially if it’s a colour they like,” Mr. Jarvis said. As with luxury paint company Farrow & Ball, Forbo’s furniture linoleum comes in limited hues, but the narrow selection—including a pale pink and moody pistachio—tends to be sophisticated and cannily on-trend.

Reform, a kitchen design firm in Copenhagen, collaborates with international architects on a range of cabinets, drawers, and panels that pay homage to the traditions of Nordic modernism. In 2014, its first line, BASIS, included a lino option; eight years later, those linoleum cabinets remain the company’s best seller, said CEO and founder Jeppe Christensen. “It was not so big a leap for us because so many of the innovative midcentury Scandinavian makers who inspire us, like Arne Jacobsen, were creating wonderful things with linoleum in the ’50s and ’60s.”

Beata Heuman, the Swedish-born, London-based interior designer known for crafting playful, cosmopolitan interiors, also credits her affection for linoleum to her childhood in Scandinavia where, she said, it never really fell out of fashion. “There’s something really subtle and lovely about it—it’s a big part of my repertoire,” said Ms. Heuman.

In a hotel project currently underway in Paris, Ms. Heuman has run linoleum along the walls of a powder room in the manner of a dado panel. For past residential assignments, she has used lightly marbled sheets of linoleum flooring everywhere from tidy living rooms to family bathrooms. The material, she said, has a wonderful way of warming up the space and “bring[ing] luxe finishes back down to earth.”

In kitchens, lino squares remain classic. “Checkerboard can feel a little cliche, but we recently put pale cream and gray together and that felt really peaceful and serene,” Ms. Heuman explained, noting that the sometimes aggressive pattern assumes a gentler personality when executed in neutrals. For the mudroom of a family home in Notting Hill, the designer updated a mosaic linoleum she spied in a photo of an Art Deco-era New York City vestibule. “There are so many possibilities,” she said with a laugh. “Honestly, my total fantasy would be to partner with Forbo and design a range of linoleum for them.”

Linoleum is “really good at crossing the high-low line,” said Rustam Mehta of the New York firm GRT Architects. Indeed, for a current project—an ambitious, top-dollar reimagining of a Harlem townhouse—Mr. Mehta uses the material not just as a luxe, powder-pink drawer facing in the kitchen and dining rooms but also, in hunter green and deep red, to top two custom-millwork desks. “It evokes a classic leather writing surface,” he explained.

“We’re at this interesting place,” said Mr. Mehta. “It’s like subway tile or penny tile—people love to elevate these simple things. Americans know what linoleum is but might not know what it can be.”