FLOORING
WELL transforms flooring
Gareth Griffiths
The WELL Building Standard requires building designers and owners to reimagine flooring not as a passive surface, but as an active contributor to air quality, comfort, and wellbeing – correcting legacy practices that were environmentally and physiologically unfriendly.
In early human settlements, floors were made from natural and locally sourced materials. Earth floors were compacted or sealed with clay or dung. Advanced cultures developed wood planks, stone slabs, and tiles. These materials were durable, breathable, and recyclable by default. They were also inherently low-impact, because they required minimal processing and were embedded in local ecosystems.
Ever walked into a new carpeted or decorated room and smelled that“ new carpet smell”? Not great news, but by the 20th century, floors were often sealed or finished with materials now considered harmful. These included lead-based paints and glazes, tar, bitumen, or creosote( for moisture resistance) and solventheavy oils, varnishes and solvents. Carpets were frequently made using volatile organic compound( VOC) emitting binders such as phenol formaldehyde resins.
These substances and some of the binders released toxic compounds into indoor environments and soils, with long-lasting contamination effects.
In addition to the above, many of these flooring treatments were not durable and very often they failed to adequately insulate the floor from the cold. In the prior centuries, this gave rise to indoor fires burning continuously to try and keep the interiors warm.
But later, in hindsight, the older generation of carpets and applied finishes failed, not because they were“ natural” or“ traditional”, but because the behaviour of moisture was misunderstood, while the impacts of resins, earlier polymers and various chemical impacts were unregulated. In addition, health outcomes were not design drivers and there was no such thing as green building.
60 autumn 2026 | www. tobuild. co. za