The history of linoleum
The Origin of Linoleum
How a 170-year-old accident became linoleum and why Marmoleum Soul is the most honest natural linoleum flooring made today.
The floor that started with a forgotten tin of paint
In 1855, a young English inventor named Frederick Walton left a tin of oil-based paint unsealed overnight. By morning, a tough, rubbery skin had formed across the surface solidified linseed oil, which chemists would later call linoxyn. Most people would have scraped it off and moved on. Walton peeled it back carefully and started thinking.
It took him years to work out what it was good for. He tried selling the oxidised oil as a waterproof fabric treatment. He experimented with heating it, mixing it, changing the process. Eventually he began adding sawdust to the mixture, and by 1861 had arrived at a material the world would come to call linoleum.
He named it from two Latin words: linum, meaning flax, and oleum, meaning oil. The name described exactly what it was. Nothing hidden. No marketing fluff. Just the material, named honestly after its ingredients.
From a tin of paint to the floors of the world
Fourteen years after its invention, linoleum had become a ubiquitous feature in homes and commercial buildings, so commonplace that the British Courts eventually ruled it a generic term rather than a trademark. Walton had invented both the material and the word for it, and lost the word to common vernacular within his lifetime. That's how quickly it spread!
The recipe Walton arrived at has barely changed — linseed oil, pine rosin, wood flour and pigments. Still the same key ingredients.
Curious how we make linoleum? Watch how we make linoleum
What happened to linoleum's original colour?
Here's the part of linoleum's history that most people don't know.
Walton's original material oxidised linseed oil pressed with wood flour and cork had a colour of its own. The wood flour gave it warmth. The linseed oil gave it depth. It was the colour of the raw materials themselves, before anything was added to change it.
Pigments came later. Patterns came later. By the twentieth century, linoleum had become synonymous with bold geometric prints and the brightly coloured kitchen floors of postwar homes.
The material's natural palette quiet, warm, honest was buried under a century of colour and design.
Marmoleum Soul goes back to before that.
Marmoleum Soul: Linoleum at its most essential
With minimal to no added pigment, Marmoleum Soul reveals the bare and true look of raw linoleum. Wood flour, linseed oil, limestone shown as they are, mixed as nature made them.
The five shades in the collection don't stray far from that origin point: one that is completely unpigmented, and four that nod gently toward the ground, the sky, a pale bloom, a quiet beach.
Linoleum today is still crafted from essentially the same materials as Walton's original version, primarily sourced from natural renewable resources. Marmoleum Soul simply makes that visible again and finished with Topshield pro for durability and easy upkeep, it's built to age well: a floor that grows richer over time.
Additionally, removing high levels of pigment improves the carbon footprint or carbon-positive impact from cradle to gate of Marmoleum even further. Stripping back to only the bare essentials is better for the planet.
Download the product catalogue or request a sample to see how the Marmoleum Soul natural linoleum flooring collection sits against your project palette.
How we make linoleum
(Resource: Design Life-Cycle, Hagley)