By
Laminex
Formica
Homapal Plattenwerk GMBH
Designed in
Germany
Description
Combining cutting edge design with the flexible characteristics of laminate, Laminex introduced a new avant-garde texture to its Innovations® range, Plex. Exclusive to Laminex, the new texture illuminates the beauty and radiance of natural metals, giving a touch of luxury, glamour and authenticity to vertical surfaces. The motivation was to develop an alternative to the long-established brushed look and which was both very contemporary and complemented enduring popularity of metals in interior design schemes.
Key Features
and/or Benefits
Created as a texture on top of real metal foils, PLEX is a small scale, versatile finish that impresses with its textile feel, crisp touch and rather low gloss sheen. It combines the texture, colour and character of real metals with the practical, hard wearing, lightweight and flexible properties of a laminate. While not as durable as non-metallic laminates, the protective film used with PLEX provides a surface that is more resilient, and more resitent to corrosion, than the metal foil that is used in their production.
The inspirations behind the new finish were crisp satin and silk weaves with their subtle reflective quality and pleasant dry touch. Texture scale, depth of embossing and smoothness of the surface were carefully designed so that the visual cue is reinforced by the haptic experience. While PLEX is inspired an informed by textile and fine mesh, it does not seek to imitate.
Innovations PLEX is supplied in a discrete palette that recognises the perennial importance of cool, neutral metals as well as a trend towrds the warming of the metallic palette, particularly the influence of brown and burnished gold an copper.
The Laminex Innovations collection is typically associated with strong colours and visual effects. The inspiration for PLEX however is more to do with anonymity. PLEX does not clamour for attention or seek to be the hero of the space. It is designed as a novel visual material that blends and hamonises with the main materials in a space. It is not a signature surface, but constrained and subtle, designed to promote volume use across a wide variety of applications without compromising unique solutions to the client brief.