Milliken Europe Blog

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I have experienced the interior environment in Higher Education (HE) as a designer, senior lecturer, parent of students and latterly as a postgraduate student. This has provided me with a range of perspectives from marvelling at my son’s en-suite bathroom (and noticing the cost) to wincing as students cut card on new studio tables. 

In today’s blog, we feature Decor Floor Hungary, and Tirza spoke with us about the company, their favourite collections, an exciting project, and what’s most important to their customers.

How long have you worked with Milliken?

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100 days of lock-down, we find ourselves living under the microscope. Our lives have shrunk, and we have had to adapt to a new way of life, tucked away in the safety of our homes. Customer Experience Manager, Mental First Aider and Yoga Professional, Urva Soni who is based full time in our London showroom shares her personal experiences, as she returns to work, in Clerkenwell London.

Today we are shining the spotlight on AQINA, our partner in Poland, and Marcin spoke with us about working with Milliken, how a strong product portfolio really helps win projects and about some recent exciting projects. 

In today’s blog, we feature Dizajn Pod, and Biba spoke with us about the company, their
favourite collections, an exciting project, and what’s most important to their customers.

In today’s blog, we feature Stepp in Iceland, and Elias spoke with us about the company, their
favourite collections, and working with Milliken.

As part of Stay Connected we’ve been reaching out to our partners across Europe, and today we are featuring a discussion with Henrik at ProsjektGulv to discuss favourite collections, recent projects, and the importance of photography.

How long have you worked with Milliken?

Meet The Maker: Lee Riley 

Time at Milliken: 15 years

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Are we just scratching the surface of the co-working movement? We’ve always had the idea that co-working spaces are synonymous with start-up businesses, sharing the costs and infrastructure of a communal work space, but with the rapid increase of co-working spaces in major cities, it is also interesting to learn that the format is being successfully adopted by large corporate organisations.

The goal of any entrance flooring system is to safely trap and manage dirt and moisture when entering a building to create a safer, cleaner, and healthier environment. If not thought out properly and designed with intent and care, it could be detrimental to wellness and even finances.  

Meet The Maker: Mark Brixton 

Time at Milliken: 13 months.

Meet The Maker: Steve Ainscough 

Job title: Millitron® Design Technician – AKA The Pattern Pro 

Having spent time operating in and leading the print department, Steve now heads up technical support for Milliken’s Millitron patterning technology. 

Time at Milliken: 24 years 

With universities competing more than ever before to attract students from at home and abroad, accommodation is becoming a competitive industry.

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As governments around the world look to ease lockdowns, companies are searching for safe ways to get their employees back to work as soon as possible. Safety, as well as, mental and physical well-being is now firmly at the top of the corporate agenda.

Meet The Maker: Martin Topping

Time at Milliken: 5 and a half years. I’ve just reached the 5 year achievement award, when you get a certificate and vouchers.

Meet The Maker: Lucinda Bamford 

Job title:  Warping Operator, aka The Warping Wizard  

Time at Milliken: 4 years

What better place to seek out and support new design talent than at New Designers 2019. Milliken’s Senior Designers, Claire Kimble and Helen Lloyd spent an inspiring day perusing the work of some of the most talented graduate design students from across the country.

Leading flooring designer and manufacturer Milliken is proud to be celebrating its 100^th year of production in Britain. The company was first registered in 1920 at the Waterside Mill in Bury, Greater Manchester when it became one of the earliest textile manufacturers in the UK. It manufactured cotton shirtings and in later years industrial fabrics before switching to air bag manufacture in 2004. Following the purchase of the Beech Hill Plant in Wigan, the first Millitron® carpet tile (using Milliken’s patented digital dye technology) was printed in the UK in 1986, which makes 2021 the 35^th year Milliken has made carpet tiles in the UK. The last UK site Milliken purchased was the Middleton Plant in 1997 where protective flooring and entryway products are now produced. 

Definitive ethics award listing marks notable recognition for diversified manufacturer Milliken & Company has been recognised by Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, as one of the 2022 World’s Most EthicalCompanies.

With more than 60 locations and approximately 8,000 associates worldwide, the diversified global manufacturer is one of six companies to receive this prestigious ethics-based honour every year since the award’s inception.

MILLIKEN & COMPANY RECOGNISED AMONG THE 2024 WORLD'S MOST ETHICAL COMPANIES 
Diversified global manufacturer Milliken & Company is proud to be included on the 2024 World’s Most Ethical Companies list curated by Ethisphere, a leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices. This annual recognition highlights organisations with an exemplary commitment to business integrity through robust ethics, compliance and governance programs. Milliken is one of only six honourees to make the list every year since the award was first created in 2007.

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For the second year running Milliken partnered with Loughborough University on a project to design carpet tile concepts using Milliken’s proprietary Millitron® patterning technology for theoretical commercial environments. The project, developed closely with the University, forms an important part of the students’ final degree. But in 2020 – the year of the global pandemic – the students and staff faced unique challenges.

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London Design Festival celebrates and promotes London as the design capital of the world. Over the course of the eight days, there are numerous design districts throughout London that hold hidden gems within curated design venues, all opening their doors to the public, presenting exhibitions, installations, talks and statement design products all designed to inspire. This year’s Design Festival immersed us with installations that were interactive, designed for the landscapes and environments they sit within and products that were as much about the environment as they were good design.

From the 21st to the 23rd May 2019 Clerkenwell will play host to one of the largest and most popular celebrations of design in the UK: Clerkenwell Design Week (CDW). Clerkenwell is home to more creative businesses and architects per square mile than anywhere else on the planet, making it one of the most important design hubs in the world. Here at Milliken, we have been a showroom partner since the event’s inception in 2009 and are taking part again in the event’s tenth year.

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Figures published to mark Mental Health Awareness Week show that mental health is the leading cause of sickness absence in the UK, with over half of employees suffering from stress, a third from anxiety and a quarter from depression. It’s no surprise then that it has become a huge priority for employers. A study by Bupa revealed that mental health is a major concern at board level for almost two-thirds (65%) of businesses, rising to 72% among large corporates. Mental health was a bigger issue than physical illness among employees for nearly a third (29 %) of businesses.

As businesses and employees anticipate a return to commercial workplaces, employee’s wellness is a high priority. Design plays a big part in ensuring that a safe haven can be created indoors,  and while it might not be the first thing that comes to mind as you think about improving the air quality in your building, flooring plays a surprisingly important role in creating a healthy building environment.

How do I choose the perfect flooring colour? This question gets asked a lot by people who are renovating their spaces. Interior designers, decorators and architects study long and hard to master the art of colour matching; but not all stakeholders have that advantage. This can sometimes make this quite a daunting task when trying to find the perfect flooring for a renovation project. However, it doesn’t have to be.

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The b-word ‘biophilia’ has become the latest buzzword to enter the vocabulary of architects and designers alike as we’re slowly seeing the transformation of workspaces changing from grey to green with the introduction of plants, foliage and living walls.

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It could be said that we explore colour throughout our daily lives. Living with and through colour affects all that we are as individuals. 

Our personalities, our mood, our thoughts, what we eat, how we feel, our choices and sometimes our desires. Colour creates memories, ideas, perceptions, it plays with light, pattern, shape and form.

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How did you get to work today? If it involved an over-crowded train or standing on a crammed bus, this could be having a detrimental effect on your health.

Karen Haller FRSA is a leading international authority in the field of behavioural colour & design psychology. Karen specialises in Human-Centred Design and how our relationship with colour, design and nature affects and influences us, as well as how businesses and designers can use it to influence positive behaviour and well-being. She is the author of ‘The Little Book of Colour, How to Use the Power of Colour to Transform Your Life.’

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The surge of interest in well-being and wellness shows no sign of abating. The modern approach adopted by enlightened employers is no longer focused on creating cultures and environments that do no harm, but rather on creating those that foster engagement, improve people’s health, address their stresses and pressures and helps them be more productive.

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Until recently if you were to describe a green office, it would most likely be the sustainable aspects of the structure. This might incorporate the building’s energy saving features such as lighting and heating, how it is designed to reuse and recycle waste and to reduce water consumption. An increasing body of evidence is now focusing on the wider benefits a sustainable workplace can have on the health and well-being of its occupants. Ways in which the work environment can sustain people as well as place.

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Part 2: Communal Spaces

In our last blog post we discussed lecture theatres and the need to rethink the spatial design of campuses to provide settings suited to student needs, but also to evolving pedagogy and teaching delivery. But it is not just the constraint caused by lecture theatres that might impact student learning and wellbeing on campus. The topic we turn to today is the design of communal spaces to host a variety of student activities.

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Part 1: The Lecture Theatre

A university campus is not just a workplace for academic and professional services staff, but also the daily ‘workplace’ for thousands of students. How university buildings are designed has a major impact on how spaces are used, and this in turn can affect the wellbeing, sense of belonging and learning success of students. In this short series of two blog posts, we want to elaborate on the importance of design on student wellbeing, but also look at common spatial settings – the lecture theatre and communal spaces – and ask how those can be designed differently.

The word festival conjures images of happy smiley faces, dancing in music filled fields to the latest headline acts. The harsh reality though can often be something much less Instagram worthy; litter across the landscape for as far as the eye can see, abandoned tents and camping equipment and a general disrespect for the countryside.

Our next Milliken interview is with our Sample Team, who together service all our European sampling needs behind the scenes, so great to hear from them and get to know them a little more!

In a new series of interviews, we feature Milliken associates, learning about their time at Milliken,
and more about them individually. The first of these interviews feature Promise from our Customer Service team!

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“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions” Dalai Lama XIV.

Happiness is so important to us humans that we make it the foundation tenet of government, spirituality (Dalai Lama, 1998), philosophy (Jeremy Bentham, 1789) and a burning desire for most of us to find a life well lived in perfect harmony, surrounded by the mythical ‘happiness bird’ chirping somewhere in a nearby rainbow shrouded tree.

Spring 2024 sees the launch of a fresh new palette of colours for one of Milliken’s most popular carpet design collections – Tracing Landscapes. Taking its inspiration from the colours and textures of the natural environment, the collection has become a firm favourite for many Scandinavian workspaces. In this Blog, we are delighted to share a review on the re-energised colour range from Milliken’s Norwegian agent partner Milliken’s Norwegian partner: PG (ProsjektGulv AS) pg.no, including their 3 top colours from the collection. 

We talk to colour expert Laura Perryman about Milliken’s new Tracing Landscapes collection.

Laura is a colour designer and forecaster with over 18 years of experience in CMF design across multiple industries. The author of The Colour Bible, Laura is interested in material and sensorial experiences of colour.

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​October 2018 saw the Manchester launch of a new report from the British Council for Offices (BCO) called Wellness Matters: Health and Well-being in offices and what to do about it. It is one of the most recent indications that the focus of property designers, owners, managers and occupiers is no longer solely on the environment and performance characteristics of the building, but also on its impact on the mental and physical well-being of the people that inhabit it. 

In December 2020 Milliken was proud celebrate our 100th year of manufacturing in the UK. The company was first registered in 1920 at the Waterside Mill in Bury in the North West of England, when it became one of the earliest textile manufacturers in the UK. It manufactured cotton shirtings and in later years industrial fabrics.