Introducing GridWork | Tongue & Groove makes its global debut at Milan Design Week 2026

Tongue & Groove was delighted to exhibit at Milan Design Week for the first time in April 2026—a milestone that places the brand on the global stage alongside international partners Established & Sons and Raw Edges. The centrepiece of the exhibition was GridWork, a new flooring collection designed by Raw Edges that translates the simplicity of the modernist ceramic tile into solid European oak.

“Flooring has never given designers the opportunity to express their creativity like this,” says Richard Karsay, CEO and founder of Tongue & Groove. “This new direction allows designers to add a personal touch by playing with colour, pattern and grain direction. It’s about having fun with flooring and pushing its boundaries.”

GridWork takes the most elemental of floor patterns – the square grid – and reimagines it in solid-engineered European oak. The design draws on modernist architecture and the Bauhaus movement, which champions simple grids in stone, terrazzo and clay throughout the built environment.

“You have tiles in simple 15 × 15 modernist grids – but not in wood,” says Shay Alkalay, co-founder of Raw Edges with Yael Mer. “With ceramic tiles, you see endless imitations of wood. We thought it was about time wood returned the favour. It’s one of the simplest designs we’ve ever done, but there’s something bold in that simplicity.”

The new collection is crafted using Tongue & Groove’s three-layer solid European oak construction that delivers unmatched stability and durability, with a precisely engineered chamfer between each timber block that echoes the grout lines of a ceramic tile.

The blocks are individually stained by hand in a curated palette of warm, neutral tones. The carefully formulated dye stain penetrates the timber surface for a durable finish that preserves the natural beauty of the oak grain. Tongue & Groove also developed an innovative connection system that allows the blocks to be laid in multiple orientations, enabling designers to create patterns using grain, colour, or both.

“Timber has a lot of movement in it, especially European oak,” says Karsay. “We had to work out how to eliminate that movement, and make the tongue-and-groove system function in any direction. The end result is something truly special.”

The exhibition at Milan’s annual design week, Salone del Mobile 2026, featured a cleverly crafted installation showcasing the full colour palette and configurations of GridWork, while a large screen presented renders of the collection in interior settings.

GridWork is the first collection to emerge from a new global partnership between Tongue & Groove, Established & Sons and Raw Edges. Under the partnership, Tongue & Groove manufactures and distributes all Established & Sons timber flooring collections worldwide, with Raw Edges leading the creative direction for future designs.

“We saw an opportunity to combine our strengths,” says Karsay. “Our three brands share values and have a beautiful synergy. Together, we are going to create amazing collections and share them with the world.”

Co.Lab is a pioneering initiative from Tongue & Groove that combines the brand’s precision engineering with the groundbreaking creativity of the world’s most celebrated and visionary designers to create extraordinary flooring collections.