Innovations in Flooring: Leading manufacturers continue their efforts in bettering the industry and its producers – April 2025

Without innovative product attributes as a differentiator, suppliers are forced to compete on price alone, and everyone in the channel loses the margins that are necessary to support a healthy business. To continue growing, an industry must innovate and develop clever solutions that raise the bar from a performance, aesthetic and even sustainability perspective.

For this piece, we reached out to top manufacturers to inquire about their latest and greatest advancements in their respective areas. The following compilation shows the variety of ways manufacturers are improving products’ useful lifespan, durability, acoustic performance, appearance and sustainable profile.

Cali’s NaturMatte surfacing, which debuted with its Santa Cruz collection, redefines luxury laminate with a multi-gloss technique designed to capture the depth and character of natural wood.

Unlike standard vinyl or laminate finishes, which typically apply uniform gloss across the entire plank, NaturMatte strategically varies luster levels to enhance realism. Deep, recessed areas feature zero gloss, mimicking the organic texture of unpolished wood, while untextured surfaces carry a carefully chosen matte sheen. This controlled gloss placement, along with a subtle sand-swept grain pattern, creates a driftwood-like embossing that brings dimension and a timeworn aesthetic. The result is a highly realistic, low-maintenance floor.

CFL Flooring has advanced the field of acoustic flooring through its patented technologies that substantially reduce both reflected and transmitted impact sounds. This technology employs multiple layers of proprietary materials engineered to block specific frequencies, leading to greatly improved acoustic performance across various hard surface flooring categories, including multilayer LVT, laminate and wood.

CFL has been granted numerous U.S. patents covering these acoustic solutions, with an additional two in 2025.

In hard surface, Engineered Floors introduced PureGrain High-Def Technology, utilizing Hymmen’s Jupiter Digital Printing Line, creating surfaces that look like wood or stone by capturing the intricate details, subtle textures and authentic depth of natural materials with clarity. Products are manufactured in the U.S.

Similarly, the company’s PureColor High-Def Technology addresses the color inconsistencies and fading of traditional dyeing methods by infusing color throughout the fiber, creating a vibrant, fade-resistant and durable carpet. PureColor High-Def can combine up to 24 different colors within a single fiber, enabling significant design flexibility. Products are also U.S. made.

IFC’s Canopy Flex, launching in late spring 2025, features a self-adhering acoustic pad for LVT and looselay flooring products. Unlike traditional looselay, which has been primarily used in commercial spaces, Canopy Flex delivers the same high performance while eliminating the need for glue-down installation. With Canopy Flex, flooring is move-in ready in record time. The initial launch of Canopy Flex will feature ten tile and stone looks.

Since launching the first-ever carbon negative carpet tile in 2020, Interface has continued to innovate across its products, processes and supply chain as it works to avoid, reduce and store more carbon than it emits with the goal to be carbon negative by 2040. In April 2024, the company announced its decision to focus on direct carbon reductions-not offsets-to meet the urgency of the climate crisis. It reaffirmed this commitment with the launch of its first-of-its-kind carbon negative Nora rubber flooring prototype in January 2025. Leveraging learnings from its carpet tile innovation, the prototype is made with bio-based and carbon-storing materials.

This year, Engineered Floors’ J+J Flooring is adding a product category to its repertoire with Positive Impact-its first bio-based resilient offering. Manufactured largely from plant-based oils, such as canola or castor, and naturally occurring mineral components such as chalk, Positive Impact does not contain chlorine, plasticizers, solvents, harmful pollutants or phthalates. Building off the aesthetic of J+J’s most popular LVT lines, Positive Impact comes in two styles: the wood-inspired Response, offered in a 20cm x 120cm plank, and the stone-inspired Reaction, offered in a 50cm x 100cm tile.

Mannington is debuting the newest of its “Adura Bevolution” with SculptedEdge, a soft, smooth bevel for a refined and elegant LVT aesthetic, introduced at Surfaces 2025.

At the inception of the LVT category, edges were mostly micro-beveled to minimize “ledging.” This same approach was later adapted for rigid products as they emerged on the scene. This was followed by painted bevels, which were initially used in laminate flooring to cover core material before being integrated into LVT. Neither of these two approaches to beveling were a real solution to the design challenge of making the product more realistic.

Mannington’s “Bevolution” increased realism, first with CraftedEdge, an award-winning technology that replicates the chiseled, handcrafted bevels of high-end flooring. TumbledEdge technology followed, combining an irregular, hand-chiseled bevel with a painted edge to mimic grouted tile, enhanced further by NatureForm Glaze for an authentic porcelain look.

Built on Mannington Commercial’s Tru Technology, Attune is a 7mm heterogeneous sheet designed to enhance acoustic performance and ergonomic comfort. By dampening sound levels and reducing fatigue from standing and walking, Attune helps create healing-focused environments that promote wellbeing and stress reduction. Available in 28 wood and abstract visuals, Attune withstands heavy rolling loads while providing the perfect balance of support and “bounce back” to support comfort underfoot. Made in the U.S., Attune contains 60% post-consumer recycled content by total product weight and features a low-emission, non-orthophthalate construction. It is 105% carbon offset from cradle to gate.

Mirage’s new DurAlive finish, introduced on its new Lively and Autumn collections, lets the vivid colors of wood flooring shine through a translucent finish, offering the perfect balance of resistance and refinement with a silky-to-the-touch feel. The finish also boasts superior UV protection, stain resistance and scratch resistance while being easy to maintain. The new DurAlive finish has a 35-year warranty on finish wear-through for residential applications and a three-year warranty against wear of finish in light commercial applications.

Color Pulse by Mohawk Group is a patent-pending water-saving technology that delivers the visual richness of space-dyed yarn with the enhanced performance and sustainability of solution-dyed nylon. This innovation also features a zero-water dyeing process, significantly reducing water consumption-saving up to one cup of water per carpet tile, which translates to 331,000 gallons annually-while also enhancing carpet durability and recyclability. Color Pulse is available with Duracolor Tricor or ColorStrand SD.

In addition, Mohawk Group’s EcoFlex One is a premium modular backing system designed to improve comfort and acoustics while eliminating costly moisture testing. EcoFlex One has achieved a significant reduction in embodied carbon, as measured by its new Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), and holds certifications such as NSF 140 Platinum, Red List Free, and Living Product Challenge Petal Certified. Notably, EcoFlex One uses the lowest amount of water in the manufacturing process of any carpet tile on the market and, when featuring Duracolor Tricor, is made with at least 74% recycled content.

CrystaLux Ultra is a proprietary protection layer, exclusively owned and trademarked by MSI for use with its Everlife LVT, hybrid rigid core (HRC) and hardwood product lines. CrystaLux Ultra is a transparent top layer permanently built into every vinyl flooring product that MSI manufactures, creating a barrier that helps protect flooring against scratches, stains, scuffs and UV damage. Composed of a proprietary combination of minerals and polymers, CrystaLux Ultra offers maximum protection against everyday wear and tear, scratches, stains, dents, pet accidents and UV exposure. This enhanced finish not only increases the durability of the flooring but also significantly lowers its maintenance requirements.

DuoGrout by Novalis Innovative Flooring delivers the elevated look of grouted tile without the mess or hassle. Designed for effortless installation, this luxury vinyl tile features precision-crafted “grouted” edges and a faux center grout line, creating the look of two perfectly grouted 18”x18” tiles within a single sophisticated 18”x36” format. DuoGrout also offers design versatility, with the flexibility to install in a straight stack or brick pattern.

Shaw Industries’ commercial brands, Patcraft and Shaw Contract, have introduced EcoWorx Resilient, a PVC-free, fully recyclable resilient flooring. The innovation expands upon Shaw’s EcoWorx carpet tile, launched in 1999 as the first PVC-free and fully recyclable carpet tile.

Other key benefits of EcoWorx Resilient include: PVC-free construction, addressing increasing demand for healthy materials; low embodied carbon footprint (5.21kg CO2e/m2); ExoGuard+ performance, providing superior resistance to stains and scratches in heavy commercial applications;

coverage by Shaw’s Environmental Guarantee for free pickup and recycling through the ReTurn Reclamation Program (for a 1,000-square-foot minimum); recyclability into EcoWorx carpet tile or back into EcoWorx Resilient; certification by Greenhealth Approved and Greenguard Gold; Declare label, EPD and Health Product Declaration (HPD).

Shaw Floors’ Pet Perfect carpet combines advanced technologies to deliver unparalleled durability, cleanability and protection. Engineered with Anso high-performance fibers, it offers exceptional resilience, backed by industry-leading warranties. Pet Perfect features R2X stain and soil resistance, repelling spills and accidents and simplifying clean-ups. For next-level protection, Pet Perfect+ includes Shaw’s proprietary LifeGuard Spill-Proof Technology, preventing liquids from seeping into the cushion and subfloor-helping to reduce odors and the risk of mold.

Southwind’s Summit LVT boasts a 19mm thick plank (¾”) that is 5”x60”. This brings significant installation advantages in time and money savings by avoiding the reinstallation of subfloor material in a typical floor replacement project.

In addition to a thicker plank, Summit is equipped with a 30 mil wearlayer, 3mm IXPE attached pad, microbevel, embossing in register and a Uniclic Locking System that makes it easy to install in tight spaces and under door jambs. Summit carries Southwind’s standard lifetime residential warranty and ten-year commercial warranty.

Since announcing Tarkett and Mycocycle’s innovation partnership in 2024, the companies made significant strides in turning used flooring into new, bio-based raw materials, moving one step closer to a truly circular future.

By harnessing the natural power of mushrooms, Mycocycle’s bio-conversion technology has successfully processed carpet tile, hybrid and broadloom carpets, and rubber tile collected through Tarkett’s ReStart take-back and recycling program.

The companies are now entering the next phase: exploring how this bio-remediated material can be integrated into the manufacturing of new flooring products. The early results are promising, with Tarkett actively developing a new use for the material.

Copyright 2025 Floor Focus

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