6 Tips for Sustainable Hospitality Furniture

Select Eco-Friendly Materials

When choosing hotel furniture, we recommend picking eco-friendly materials. These include pieces made from natural, organic, or vegan materials. Most common materials include bamboo, wood, unfinished timbers, organic fabrics, and reclaimed materials.

For upholstery that you can incorporate in sofas or upholstered dining chairs, you could opt for faux leathers that are made from polyurethane cork, waxed cotton, or PVC.

Ensuring that these raw materials are eco-friendly would diminish the use of chemicals that are usually used in these furniture pieces. Remember that too many of these chemical substances might contaminate the environment.

Opt for a Sustainable Process

The process of manufacturing has a huge impact on the sustainability of your hotel furniture. Items that have been mass-produced tend to use loads of energy, causing pollution and a lot of waste.

Fortunately, there are a lot of alternatives that your hospitality furniture manufacturer can do to minimize the adverse effects of furniture manufacturing on the environment.

For starters, your manufacturer can recycle any sawdust, excess timber, and other scraps. They can also utilize sources of low-impact energy like hydroelectricity.

No alt text provided for this image

Use a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA)

Sustainable hospitality furniture manufacturers utilize a life-cycle assessment (LCA) in order to evaluate the impacts of a product or process through its life cycle.

Hence, the whole process, from material procurement to disposal, would be assessed to gauge whether there are mishaps that could endanger the environment.

Switch to Sustainable Paints and Finishes

When you are considering painting your hospitality furniture, you can switch to sustainable paints and finishes. Normal paints have volatile organic compounds that emit harmful gases which are harmful to the environment. Paints that release VOCs continue to off-gas for several years.

It should be noted that when you are exposed to too many VOCs, you might be susceptible to several health conditions such as rashes, headaches, and fatigue, among others.

Sustainable paints and finishes, on the other hand, use components made of organic materials and natural solvents. With these products, you do not need to worry about these harmful compounds because the smell is minimal, and clean-up is easy.

Consider Sustainable Fabrics and Upholstery

For upholstery that you can incorporate in sofas or upholstered dining chairs, you could still opt to be more sustainable.

The key to choosing sustainable upholstery may be easier than you think. It involves working around what you already have with the design of each of your rooms. Whether your hotel needs a rustic visual or something edgier, eco-fabric upholstery and fabrics could work well.

For starters, you can pick faux leathers that are made from polyurethane cork, waxed cotton, or PVC. Organic fabric options or handwoven fabric textiles would also be sustainable.

No alt text provided for this image

Curate a Highly Sustainable Hospitality Space

Finally, we suggest curating a highly sustainable hospitality space where you would install your furniture. All the other furnishings in your hotel can have an effect on your furniture items – whether directly or indirectly.

These fixtures should ensure that your hospitality space would have the appropriate insulation, heat, and humidity so that your furniture will not wear quickly.

FAQs about Sustainable Hospitality Furniture

How can I determine the sustainability of hospitality furniture?

The best way to identify the sustainability of your custom hospitality furniture is to use this formula: (total cost of furniture + monthly maintenance costs) / number of months used = monthly price.

The monthly cost of your furniture would allow you to determine how much you are spending on a monthly basis for your furnishings. This will also allow you to gauge whether you will have a sustainable piece of furniture that would last long-term.

How can I dispose of any hospitality furniture in an eco-friendly manner?

As a hotelier, you should ensure that no furniture should go to waste. Even when it is already worn out, you can repair or refurbish it to make it look new and appealing.

If the item is unsalvageable, you can dismantle the whole piece and recycle the individual parts elsewhere. You can use these components as embellishments or as spare material when repairing other similar furniture items.

How can investing in sustainable hospitality furniture be advantageous to my space?

Since sustainable furniture has been manufactured to last longer, you won’t need to shell out a lot of cash to replace them. Instead, you can use that spare money to improve other aspects of your hotel.

One of the other benefits of investing in eco-friendly furnishings is that you can market your hotel as having them on your property. This will attract more guests who are part of the growing green movement. Moreover, it could further enhance your hotel’s prominence in the industry.

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics