Eco-furniture: A broad and very subjective list

Compiled by David Bergman
Updated on January 24, 2005

All of the additions in this newest version of the Viridian Furniture list are in one category, the one that I titled in an obvious moment of kowtow to our Viridian Pope: "What if Green Design Were Just Good Design." But that's a good thing (the additions, not the brown nosing). It means that eco designed furniture is becoming less like what too many people think all eco furniture looks like. It's breaking out of its crunchy niche and getting its sustainable teeth into everything. Mainstreamed green design, though, is not necessarily Viridian design. We still need more of the type of stuff Bruce saw at the 2001 International Contemporary Furniture Fair, but conceived so that it doesn't compromise basic eco concepts like using sustainable materials. Unfortunately, much of the cool stuff -- the things we unrepentant materialists crave -- isn't really all that green. An incredibly fantastic blobject made of polyurethane is still petroleum-based.

For the most part, I've not listed things that can't be seen online. For instance, there's a lot of great stuff to be found via the IDRA website, but often nothing further to be found about the designer or manufacturer. Same thing with an interesting new book, Eco-design: the Sourcebook -- further info on most of the items isn't available online.

The disclaimer: With a few exceptions, I haven't checked the designers' or manufacturers' claims. I'm hoping there's not too much greenwashing going on here....

Please send your suggestions and additions to

Some general sites

EcoBusinessLinks A listing of eco-furniture sources (who paid a few bucks to get listed there).
Futureproofed Good stuff, if you're in or near Belgium.
Greenpages.org/Co-op America There's a furniture section within.
Oikos Oikos is a great green building site. This is their furniture index page.
Realgoods Retail green furnishings.
Redjellyfish.com Within this site for "people who are concerned with natural living" is this page with links to furniture sources. A lot of the sources, though, don't mention sustainability. Maybe the redjellyfish editors know more.

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The organic-y stuff -- what most people think of when you say eco-furniture

Airedale Woodworks Furniture from the wood of old tobacco barns.
ArtiGianni "Useful art," non-endangered woods, natural oils.
Bamboo Hardwoods Made in Vietnam. Sold in Seattle.
Earthshade.com Natural window shades made of non-toxic, environmentally sustainable, natural reeds, bamboos, grasses, and other natural plant fibers.
FoundWood Furniture More artful twigs.
Josswood Furniture Ye olde furniture from recycled barns and fences.
Natural Tree Furniture The name says it.
Pajaro Jai Foundation Sustainably harvested woods and local labor in Panama.
Robert Brandegee Designs Furniture mainly from hand-hewn logs from early log structures.
Rustic Furniture of Moab Handmade from recycled wood.
Safe Solutions Furniture from recycled wood pallets.
Sleepywood Rustic Furniture Adirondack style pieces from local responsibly harvested woods, natural oil finishes.
Tamalpais NatureWorks Buy the whole kit or just the hardware and plans.
Tekiah Hemp Co-op Hemp hammocks.
Texas Backroads Furniture "Custom rustic/Western-style furniture built from reclaimed woods."
The Tree Project A collection of sculptural furniture (including a Klingon drinking table!) all from a single 118 year old tree.
Tropical Salvage Custom traditional-looking stuff from salvaged tropical woods using local labor.
The Wooden Duck Furniture from reclaimed wood.
Woodwins Outdoor furniture from recycled wood. SmartWood certified.

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To quote the Pope/Emperor: "What if Green Design Were Just Good Design."

Here's some stuff that doesn't have to live in an Adirondack cabin.

Antiquarius Click on "contemporary rugs & carpets" to check out their naturally dyed designs on unbleached wool.
Artemide e-light Manufactures the "e-light," a very low energy use, "recyclable" light to match your imac.
Azcast Furniture and accessories in cast recycled aluminum.
Baltix Office/home office furniture, wheatboard, etc.
Berkeley Mills Furniture made of FSC-certified woods. Handsome pieces with a Japanese and Arts & Crafts influence.
Blueline A British office furniture company with all the right ideas (certification, buy-back, packaging reduction, materials research ...).
Blu Dot Innovative designs that are sometimes material efficient, sometimes ship flat (saving energy in transportation), sometimes multi-function. And pretty inexpensive.
Cappellini Cappellini has lots of cool stuff by assorted designers, a surprising number of whom incorporate at least some sustainability in their work. But it's a mixed bag, and their website has very little info. See Marcel Wanders, Shigeru Ban, Tom Dixon, Ilkka Suppanen, Jasper Morrison.
Celtic and Viking Furniture Celtic and Viking inspired furniture from reclaimed timber. Imagine a Viking interpretation of a tv cabinet -- now there's timeless design.
Chista Furniture and lighting, much of it shaped from salvaged Far East woods.
Co-lab Studio An ecologically and socially conscious company employing "at risk" Detroit residents to make inventive furniture from found and recycled materials. Some if belongs in the "down n dirty" category below, but most of it doesn't have a found object look.
CP Lighting Lighting made of hand colored post-consumer recycled plastic. But incandescent. (C'mon, Chris...)
DesignTex It's a fabric; no it's a biodegradable waste product for farms.
EcoChoices/EcoBedroom Good basic stuff from sustainable wood.
Eco-furniture.com A fairly wide selection of eco pieces, mostly contemporary.
Ecologic Clean-looking stuff from recycled plastic lumber. "Made Twice in America."
EcoSofa Ecorbusier.
ecoSoHo SoHo furniture utilizing a variety of sustainable materials.
Environmental Interiors Healthy and ecologically sustainable rugs.
Environmental Language Refined contemporary designs with eco materials and natural finishes. I wish there were more specifics about it on the site.
Fire & Water Self plug from the compiler of this list. Award winning lighting made of sustainable materials and energy efficient light sources.
Furnature Upholstered furniture for the chemically sensitive (without looking like it).
Furnucci Children's furniture made of biofiber and non-toxic finishes.
Gary Weeks Rocking chairs (and chairs and tables) from mostly certified woods.
Good Girl Goods Part of a growing movement to make eco cool: "finding eco-savvy style" with a very personal and personable take. Some of the items are for direct sale, others are links.
The Green Culture Assorted eco-pieces including interesting cardboard stuff.
Hardwood Artisans Traditional designs from certified sustainably grown woods.
Healthy Interiors Carries a range of eco and healthy home products.
Herman Miller has been incorporating recycled content, as well as design for disassembly and recyclability, into some of their chair and workstation designs. The Aeron chair (see below in Ergonomic design) has over 60% recycled content.
Ikea Air Air-filled chairs, lounges and stools from Ikea. All we need now is a solar powered hair dryer.
Interface Carpet Tiles Design your modular rug with patterns from sustainably produced carpet tiles.
Jeffrey Bernett Huelsta Home and office storage and shelving systems earning the German "Blue Angel" rating.
The Joinery is another Arts & Crafts/Stickley-influenced company using FSC-certified woods.
Jonas Hauptman cool modern chairs made from wood alternatives like crushed palm fronds
Klisanin Ross Environmentally conscious rugs and children's furniture.
KorQ/Walz Cork furniture. Now you can really be pinned to your seat.
Light Corp. A highly efficient table lamp designed by the lighting research guys at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (It's cool, though; they don't seem like the pocket protector types.)
metaForm studio Cool contemporary stuff, reinterpreting recycled industrial materials.
Mioculture If you're looking for that futuristic yet retro look on your walls (think Blade Runner), check out their 3D modular wallcovering made of molded recycled paper.
Modern Link This multidisciplinary company includes a line of bamboo and steel tables and cabinets. They don't emphasize the eco-ness of the line, which may reflect an acknowledgment that bamboo isn't always as green as we'd like to think.
Nu Collection Modern rug designs, hand woven in Turkey using vegetable dyes.
Objx Well designed, well made furniture from sustainable materials.
Olive Designs Furniture intended for lobbies, but it looks like it might fit in a contemporary type home too. Lots of recycled/sustainable materials used and they're planning a take-back program.
Pallet Art "Art furniture" from discarded pallets. Nicer than it sounds.
Peter Danko Tables and chairs constructed of highly efficient ply-bent wood.
Philippe Starck "Archimoon" task lamp. An energy efficient desk lamp by Phillipe Starck. It's great to see "name" designers going this direction.
Planet Squared A modular storage/table system made from high density compressed recycled paper and recycled glass.
Poesis Studio Among other things, a chair -- a very solid chair -- made from newspaper pulp.
Preform Manufacturing Inc Office furniture systems made of recycled, bio-based, and sustainable materials.
Q Collection Interior Design magazine called it "sustainable-chic." Their materials include natural latex foam, hemp and twine webbing, organic cotton muslin, organic low-impact dyed cotton upholstery and formaldehyde- and polyurethane-free stains.
RECO Project S.O.H.O. furniture shipped flat and with a recycled material "guarantee."
Scrapile A design collaboration producing furniture made from scraps from local wood shops in Brooklyn
Shaw Contract A line of environmentally sustainable carpet. It's meant for offices, but don't let that stop you.
shetkaSTONE Makes a product from ANY type of recycled paper. They then can make it into tables, counters and other things.
Studio eg Office furniture from recycled materials. And it doesn't look like it.
Trannon "Trannon is a unique business fundamentally designed to assist modern forestry, rural employment and at the same time batch produce exciting furniture."
Treehugger.com This new, ironically named site is, well, kind of like the Viridian furniture list. But we like them anyway. There's room for all of us.
Ukao Grass Furniture It apparently means "way of life" in Swahili. Furniture from bamboo and other grass products, bio-based textiles, with elements of glass, stone, or steel.
Verde Interior Products Office-type furniture made of SONOboard (the stuff that used to be called GridCore). No toxics. "Green to the core."
Vivavi One of a new crop of eco stores that is trying to escape the eco/green public image. They have clothing and accessories in addition to contemporary furniture, which includes several of the lines on this page as well as their own designs.
Whit McCleod Mission style. Yep, from California. Reclaimed and salvaged materials.
White Lotus Home Futon beds and such from sustainably harvested woods.
Wiggers Custom Furniture Individually made contemporary pieces using environmentally sound materials and practices.
Xeno Objects From the Pope's stomping grounds in Austin, a sensuous series of chairs, stools and endtables made using "a merger of an ancient process of working bamboo fibers with modern adhesives."

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Down 'n dirty -- found object designs, dumpster diving for dollars

Jam UK company making things out of other things.
Resource Revival Tables and things from recycled bicycle parts and things.
Tiffany Tomato To be fair, she's way beyond the dumpster diving category. I first saw her "Refocus" room divider made of recycled film canisters at a Pratt student review. It's now in production along with other interesting designs like her "Dawn" hanging lamp made of recycled mini-blinds. Her skirts made from the fabric of broken umbrellas (my wife's got one) also just won an award in this year's IDRA.
T.O.M.T. Very fun stuff by a very kewl friend of ours.

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Universal & Ergonomic design

Ergonomics by itself is not eco-design, but does, by some definitions, fit into a broader definition of sustainability which encompasses universal design.

AD AS Adjustable office and home office furniture
Herman Miller Herman Miller's Aeron chair dematerialized the standard office chair by substituting mesh for upholstery. (We like Vitra's Meda chair better, though. Both are available through Design Within Reach among other places.)
Humanscale Niels Diffrient's Freedom chair is perhaps the next ergonomic step after Aeron. It looks less like it came from the set of Brazil and more like 2001. And it's supposed to be simpler to adjust. We couldn't find out anything about it's greenness, though.
Wilkhahn Wilkhahn's Picto chair was one of the first ergonomic eco office chairs -- designed for simple repair, disassembly and take back.

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Temporary/emergency/catastrophe

A Metropolis article on RISD students' designs for objects for "transitional, " i.e. temporary housing.

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Thinking out of the box

There's a lot more out there, but not with a website.

Snowcrash Not sustainable in terms of materials, but fresh ideas and combinations of functions.
Stokke Chairs of a different color. Actually, different shapes.

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Used

It's hard to be more eco-efficient than buying stuff that's already been used -- especially if the alternative is it going to a landfill and you buying something made of newly consumed materials instead. Antique stores, vintage stores, thrift shops, flea markets, ebay, grandma's attic....

Ambience Dore Silicone Valley's lost treasures. At least the tangible ones.
Thrifty Planet "The collective database of businesses in the United States that sell recycled or previously owned merchandise. Our planet resources are precious and it is important to preserve them. I wanted to make it easier for you to reduce, reuse, and recycle." (I can't tell how big their database is. There was nothing listed in my zip code.. but then again I'm in the city that just eliminated half of its recycling.)

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In development or conceptual design

Same problem as the "thinking out of the box" category.

Re-f-use It's written with the "f" crossed out, but you can't do that in HTML. There's not much on the site yet, but if they get the exhibition on line, there'll be some great images.
Greener by Design Edwin Datschevsky's "Biothinking" site. Accompanies his book "The Total Beauty of Sustainable Design."
IDRA The International Design Resource Awards -- a competition to encourage the commercial development of new sustainable design.
LOT-EK It's not all green, but it is all interesting, even if you're not into the idea of living in a recycled shipping container. And their sink-wall could go in our dumpster diving section except that you'd never find that many matching sinks unless you searched an enormous number of dumpsters.
Parsons School of Design/Liana Cane A collaboration between the Parsons Product Design Department and Liana Cane Labs to design producible furniture from a sustainable material with a local owned company in Guyana.

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