Bjelin
UKHead of design at Swedish hardened wood flooring innovator Välinge Innovation, Emanuel Lidberg’s design philosophy centres on creating products that stand the test of time. This approach extends beyond the durability of materials – though its Woodura hardened wood certainly offers that longevity – to encompass the design itself. A truly successful design shouldn’t just align with current trends, Lidberg notes – it should remain visually appealing and relevant for decades.
“If a product looks outdated within five years, the designer has missed the mark; a product’s design should endure for at least 20-25 years,” he explains. “We don’t operate in a market where we have the most trendy fast-moving products, but we try to go for classic designs that actually use the raw material and enhance its natural characteristics when it comes to pigments and the colouration of the product, so you can experience the real wood underneath. If you just paint over the wood, you can maybe say today that this is a great colour, but then in two years it will be out of fashion. That is not a sustainable approach. We try to design products that work well where they are installed for a very long time.”
Before working for Välinge Innovation, the sister company to flooring manufacturer Bjelin, Lidberg worked at the Swedish hardwood company Kährs as design manager, using this extensive experience to recognise the difference in tastes in wood from one market and region to another, and the timelessness real wood offers. In Scandinavia, there’s a preference for cleaner, Select-grade wood with minimal knots, while the UK favours a more rustic look with knottier wood. In the US, coastal cities lean towards Scandinavian styles with more wood species variety, while the Midwest prefers traditional, warmer tones like gunsmoke and red. Oak dominates in the UK and Europe, whereas the US leans towards walnut. In Asia, there’s a preference for clean grades with warmer, red tones – influenced by their history of using exotic woods. The company tailors its product mix to meet these regional preferences.
“The basis of my design philosophy is that we are working with a fantastic material,” says Lidberg. “We are working with a real wood and we are not trying to cover that up. On the contrary – we want to make designs and surface treatments that enhance the naturalness of the material.”
Lidberg revels in the design possibilities offered by Woodura hardened wood, his chosen material, which is developed by Välinge. The Bjelin range includes both lacquered products, which are rated for heavy commercial use, and also brushed lacquer, which gives a more tactile feeling of the wood because it presents the visual effect of the grain in “a totally different way,” he notes.
The Woodura technology comprises an HDF board with the wood powder over it, followed by the veneer and then the full ensemble pressed together. The wood powder penetrates down into the HDF board, making it more rigid and water resistant, and the rest of the powder penetrates upwards into the veneer hardening the veneer surface.
“So if you have an all-natural product, that will be a more pleasing environment for you, not to mention of course that some alternative products, such as LVT, are based on fossil fuel resources, compared to wood which is a carbon trap if you use it as a longlife product,” Lidberg explains. “The same goes for tiles which are also sometimes designed to emulate real wood, but with these tiles you will see a pattern repeating all over. To me nothing can beat the real thing; real wood has so much positive in-built quality perception from the consumer. The feel is also different – real wood feels warm and comfortable. The trick is to create a product which conforms to all the constraints of price and performance – but which is at the same time also highly aspirational.”
