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Smile Materials

Smile Materials

From scraps to second life.

Adam and Rose, partners in life and work, founded their business on a belief that recycled plastic can be shaped into something genuinely beautiful. From a factory on the southwest coast of Wales, they lead a small, close-knit team making surfaces from waste material that most manufacturers would leave in the bin.

Rose spends most of her days in the workshop. Testing materials, spinning colour combinations, inspecting fresh batches. Adam works closely alongside her, meticulous about method, protective of the techniques that have taken decades to develop. There is an ease between them that comes from years of building something together, the kind that only builds when two people have shared the same obsession for long enough. Together they began with a simple but radical idea: that waste plastic, properly handled, could become something worth putting in the world's most considered interiors. The factory in Wales runs on precision. The plastic presses reach exact temperatures for fragments to fuse together. Panels are lifted while still warm and left to settle. A batch that passes visually may still be cut open to check density. "We're constantly testing, refining and questioning," Rose says. "Progress isn't linear." The standards are self-imposed because neither of them would have it any other way.

“We’re constantly testing, refining and questioning our materials. Progress isn’t linear.”

“We’re constantly testing, refining and questioning our materials. Progress isn’t linear.”

“We’re constantly testing, refining and questioning our materials. Progress isn’t linear.”

They collect what other manufacturers discard: single-use food and medical packaging, pre-and post-consumer plastics that would otherwise end up in landfill. Each piece passes through a process that Adam and Rose have spent decades refining, technical and intuitive in equal measure, emerging as panels that carry the visual character of the waste they came from. The results have found their way into the interiors of Dior, Paul Smith and Selfridges, trusted by some of the world's most design-conscious brands. Adam and Rose listen carefully to the architects and designers who will install their work. How a panel will be drilled, what stresses it will face, how it will perform under years of daily use. The process has been deliberately developed to be low-impact, low energy with no water because doing less harm is as important to them as doing good work. The belief that brought them here in the first place hasn't dimmed. It shows up in how they approach problems, how they support each other, how they keep refining instead of settling. Each piece that leaves the workshop carries that spirit into its new home.

“Take what the world has discarded, and make it into something that lasts.”

“Take what the world has discarded, and make it into something that lasts.”

“Take what the world has discarded, and make it into something that lasts.”