Patterned 1970s style vinyl flooring from Armstrong – cork and linoleum looks, too

I am guessing that Armstrong wasn’t intending it, but to my eye this 18″ square Luxury Vinyl Tile flooring in their Natural Expressions line has a decidedly 1970s design flair. Indeed, it’s called “Casablanca”, and we all know how essential  Middle Eastern influences were in the 1970s. E.g.: Persian and Arabesque shapes and colors. Relatedly, the 1970s were all about tile flooring — and as we’ve seen in posts I have done about vinyl and vinyl composite flooring from that period, the arabesque influence was  huge.

NOS vinyl sheet flooring spotted in 2010.

What’s old is new again. Again. Click on through to also see cork and linoleum looks –>

Of course, these vinyl tiles come in that humongous contemporary size, 18″, but that’s not a bad idea for commercial spaces. If I owned a 1970s home and had a large living space that I wanted to do over affordably, I would get a sample and consider it. Although, I really think I like this sheet vinyl better — snappy. And the Tarkett Persian style sheet flooring — yum!

Of course, these tiles are also very “low chroma” — that is, channeling the greige. Anything toward the black is going to show every speck of dirt, people. I think I’d just go brown or beige.

In this Armstrong line, there also are two cork looks that might be appealing to lots of homeowners from any era starting in the 1940s. Note, the dark cork style is going to show Every Piece of Dirt. *Avoid* dark floors like this!

And, there are some marble-like looks that seem to replicate linoleum.

Finally — what a nice website! You can load up to 64 samples on one page and scan away without hitting ‘next’ all the time… and, you can download large samples on your monitor to eyeball.

On the environmental trade-offs of cork vs. linoleum vs. vinyl vs. tile vs. wood
I recognize that both cork and linoleum may have environmental benefits that vinyl does not. But, I need to see complete Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) to truly begin to assess the trade-offs among these materials including all inputs to processing them for consumer use today. Yes, cork is “renewable” — but if you need to saturate it with chemicals to make it into a floor, well, then… I need to see the 3rd-party validated LCA, please. I am very interested in this topic. I will get to it, eventually.