Indoor air quality matters
A floor is one continuous surface you breathe over all day, so its emissions land directly in the room air.
Wall area gets attention because paint is where people look, but a floor is a very large surface in most rooms and it sits closest to the air a child breathes while playing on it. It is also the surface that gets cleaned, warmed and walked over — all of which move what is left in the film.
What low-VOC means
Where a build on this site publishes a VOC figure it sits between 2 and 8 g/L — the cementitious levelling compound at the low end, the garage broadcast at the high end — and the indoor builds that carry an emission classification show French A+. Most odour is released during application and for the first day after, and ventilation is what clears it. Walk-on is a same-day event; light service starts at 24 hours and full cure at 7 days.
Two distinctions matter when you read someone's number. First, VOC is total volatiles — it says how much material leaves the film as it cures, not which compounds leave. It is not a formaldehyde test, and a low VOC figure does not on its own support a statement about any specific substance. Second, an emission classification is measured over time in a chamber, so the number depends on the age of the sample and the size of the room it assumes. Two products with similar-sounding labels can be several times apart once you compare them on the same basis.
Odour and emission are related but not the same test. A product that barely smells can still emit, and a low-VOC epoxy will smell while it cures because the volatiles are leaving the film — which is the moment to ventilate, and the reason a sealed, unheated, closed building stays unpleasant far longer than an open one.
Durability is sustainability
The warranty we publish on the heavier builds is 10 years, and a floor that stays down for a decade replaces less material over its life.
The environmental case for a floor is mostly made in its service life, not in its formulation. A coating that has to be stripped and re-poured early wastes the substrate work, the transport, the packaging and the embodied carbon of every layer — so specifying texture and thickness for the traffic a room actually sees is the greener decision, even when it uses more material today.
Where an old floor is sound but tired, a rebuild over it is usually less material than a break-out: see renovation over existing tiles and the renovation grouping. A grind-out and new pour is sometimes the right answer; it is just rarely the low-waste one.
Certifications to look for
Ask a supplier for the documents behind an eco claim: a quality-management certificate for the factory, a third-party test report on the cured film, and an emission classification for the product you are buying. Where a scheme does not cover resin flooring at all, a supplier who tells you that is more useful than one who shows you a logo.
Three questions usually settle it: what was tested, on which build-up, and when. A report dated years ago against a formulation the supplier has since changed proves less than a batch-level certificate of analysis for the material actually being shipped. And a certificate issued to a trading company is not the same document as one issued to the plant that made it.
What we deliberately do not claim
Written as a list, because the absence of a claim is easier to check than the presence of an adjective. We publish no standard number we cannot show a test report against. We make no antimicrobial or hygiene claim: a seamless surface has no grout lines to hold soil and is wipe-clean, which is a real and useful property and is not the same thing as killing anything. We publish no slip rating, because a rating is a test result and we have not run one — we describe texture and the use it suits instead. And we say low odour, not no odour: for the first day after a pour there is a working smell in the building, and ventilation is what removes it.
The documents we can issue, and the scope each one actually carries, are listed on the FAQ page. A product-level figure — VOC, emission class, hardness — is published on that product's own page and only on the pages where the build really has it.