Welcome to Material IQ!
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Wondering what materials will work best for your project?
Choosing the best material for each market, surface, and application can be an art in itself. Properly balancing design, durability, cost, and environmental impact for your clients is key to your success. In our new blog, “Material IQ,” you'll find an ever-growing catalog of real-world stories of material triumphs that can help guide your next specifications.
Each new edition will have two main features—a producer interview and thought leader profile, along with a MATERIALS IN FOCUS section covering:
Properties
Health Impacts
Value Engineering
Sustainability
How to Specify
Upcoming Topics
Healthcare and senior living
Clinics, hospitals, long-term care, and environments for aging represent growing opportunities for interior designers and architects. They also present designers with a unique set of client demands, namely hygiene, cleaning and maintenance.
Creating safe, welcoming spaces is key to delivering your clients the advantages they'll need in this competitive market.
Hospitality
Hotels and restaurants are some of the most challenging environments for decorative surfaces. High use, abuse, and rigorous cleaning, or the opposite, neglect, quickly take their toll on materials that aren't up to the task.
Retail
Few environments demand more from materials than retail. And with the new boom in design for next-generation retail experiences, durable surfaces that add pop to branded environments are in high demand.
Multi-family
Developers and designers are building apartments and condos that must appeal to multiple generations that may prefer very different aesthetics. We'll dig into which materials offer the most design flexibility, and the lowest maintenance, while still meeting budget demands.