Dezeen Showroom: British flooring company Karta made innovative use of waste leather in this range of realistic wood-look floor tiles, which are partly made from byproducts of the shoe industry.

The Recycled Leather Series features 18 different wood designs ranging from the pale and simple to the dark and aged-looking.

The scrap leather – which makes up one of the tiles' five layers of material – brings natural thermal and sound-absorbing properties while making use of a waste stream from the shoe industry.

Karta, a subsidiary of Ted Todd, prides itself on using 100 per cent natural fibres with no plastic, and the tiles' other layers include a cork backing for comfort and durability and a wood fibre layer for stability.

The wood look on the surface is created by a digital print with no design repeats across 20 boards, making any repetition within a room difficult to spot.

"Karta aims to penetrate a new market by not only providing a budget-friendly alternative to traditional wood flooring but also captivating customers interested in LVT flooring," said Karta founder Robert Walsh. "Utilising waste materials to create new, long-lasting products really is the future of product manufacturing and we look forward to continuing exploring these methods at Karta."

Product details:

Product: Recycled Leather Series
Brand: Karta
Contact: [email protected]

Material: leather, wood fibres, resin, cork
Colours/finishes: Faden, Wyld, Kozler, Shepherd, Colton, Bowen, Shumate, Sanson, Newman, Robinson, Miller, Apian, Magnus, Sanborn, Bradshaw, Saxton, Mitchell, Spence
Dimensions: 1850 x 200 x 9 millimetres

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