Please Touch! The Attraction of Tactile Products
- Kategorie: Products, General
12. June 2018 | We humans are tactile beings. We learn about the world by touching and feeling it – this is how we “grasp” our surroundings and ourselves. In today’s digital world, by contrast, seeing and hearing dominate to the point of excluding the other senses. But a countertrend is now making itself felt.
In our digitised world, the sense of touch takes a backseat. Everything we do in the internet completely ignores the realm of tactile experience. If you order a jumper online, say, unfortunately there’s no way for you to know whether it’s soft and cuddly or stiff and scratchy until you actually hold it in your hands.
In the analogue (ie “real”) world, our sense of touch plays an enormous role in helping us choose products. Oftentimes, we’re not even aware of this fact. The moment we hold something in our hands, we know whether or not it feels good. Our skin, which happens to be the body’s largest organ, allows us to perceive surface structures, temperature, pressure and vibration, among other things. So it’s no wonder that, parallel to the accelerating digitisation and virtualisation of our technology-dominated lives, we are also developing an ever-stronger craving for tactile experiences. Recently, for example, the demand for vinyl records has been surging again – despite, or precisely because of, the dominance of the digital mp3 format.
Palpable Interior Surfaces
When designing home interiors, we also pay attention to more than visual impressions. It’s not only about choosing colours, patterns and shapes that harmonise well with one another, but also about how surfaces feel. Are they soft or hard? Smooth or structured? Warm or cold? How things feel matters for our wellbeing. Whether a sofa is upholstered with smooth leather, soft velvet or high-tech fabric has a major impact on a room’s ambience; this proves that tactile sensation crucially affects our sense of wellbeing and comfort.
We tend to spend more time in a room if we enjoy touching the objects it contains. We long for rooms that are full of different materials for us to run our hands over. And surfaces with structures one can feel are therefore now all the rage.
The same trend has been noticeable in wall surfaces for quite some time. These days wallpapers have structures you can feel, sometimes even mixing different surfaces. Palpable structures are also growing in importance when it comes to floors. Natural surfaces and structures are increasingly in demand. And wood looks a with three-dimensional grain top the list in terms of popularity.
Impressive Surface Structures in Laminate Flooring
It is the surfaces of laminate floors that make them so practical and attractive. As producers of high-quality laminate flooring, we work nonstop to create fascinating surface structures. State-of-the-art manufacturing technologies enable us to make floors that are practically indistinguishable from the look and feel of real wood.
KRONOTEX offers various surface structures, ranging from PR (with the typical pores and structure of wood) across MX (for “matrix”: deep three-dimensional embossing with the matt/glossy contrasts typical of wood) and AF (for “authentic floor”: indistinguishable from living natural wood structures) all the way up to ER (embossed in register: practically identical with real wood, with perfectly aligned décor and embossed structures).
ER (embossed in register), also known as synchronised laminate flooring, is our speciality. In these floors, the patterns of the décor precisely match the tangible relief of the wood grain. The look and structure of pores, cracks and knots are replicated down to the finest level of detail. Not even professional joiners are immediately able to tell whether it is real wood or laminate. The authenticity of these wood decors has thus attained a remarkably high level of perfection. And this statement applies not only to delicate, intricate grains but also to more rustic, pronounced and deep structures.
Structures are individually developed for each décor to make sure that their look and feel perfectly harmonise. When seeing and feeling blend, this gives rise to a natural impression that is practically impossible to tell apart from the real thing.
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