Do you have a custom material in mind? For our bespoke service, we work with a diverse set of clients to create personalised panels. Send us your requirements and we can create a material to match your vision. We can choose from a range of different waste streams and a wide variety of colour palettes.
For more information, download our custom materials brochure here.
Want to create an eye-catching sustainability story for your business/project?
As part of our bespoke service, we can examine your own waste streams and recycle them into decorative panels for your personal use.
Please note there is usually a 3-6 month lead time for bespoke projects, and costs vary substantially depending on the work required.
Past materials we’ve worked with: thermoplastics (e.g. HDPE, PET, HIPS), paper, textiles and organic materials like tea, spices and coffee grounds.
We can make up materials in most colours, including metallics, with both opaque and transparent options.
If you require specific technical properties for your material, e.g. tensile strength or fire resistance, we may be able to meet your needs.
At the moment our standard dimensions are 2m x 1m at thicknesses of 5mm, 12mm and 20mm. If you require a different thickness, this might be something we can offer subject to minimum orders or a tooling charge.
1. Send us your requirements for a bespoke material for us to review and assess feasibility. You may also want to create a mood board to provide creative direction.
2. Create one or a series of test tiles ca.15x15cm at a 5mm thickness to develop the material and process (charge is £100+VAT per test tile for the R&D process, though discounts apply for ongoing material and colour development projects).
3. Test the material for large-scale production (if necessary).
4. Start production of full-sized panels.
The costs of a bespoke material varies depending on the material and the preparation work required, as well as the number of sheets you need. There will also be significant economies of scale. Expect to pay from £350+ for a sheet.
We created a series of salmon-pink panels with a mixture of pink, grey and white flecks to be turned into table tops, shelving and bench tops at Selfridges’ fitness studio at their London store. (Photos taken by Andrew Meredith)
Smile Plastics was commissioned by Selfridges to create a camouflage grey and white material for their shoe displays
We were commissioned by the Wellcome Trust alongside exhibition designers Nissen Richards to create a material with recycled electric cabling. The material was used for display features in the exhibition, which focused on the history and science of electricity.
We can be commissioned to make statement table tops and tables to your specification
Smile Plastics helped Re-worked Ltd. create a material made from recycled coffee grounds for the panels of the Sanremo Verde coffee machine.
Smile Plastics collaborated with Hej Coffee to create a coffee pod made from recycled coffee panels and recycled plastic bottles, which was installed at Societe Generale’s London offices. (Smile Plastics have also designed a series of modular units that can be mixed and matched to create a mobile coffee bar for offices and pop ups).
We created a series of salmon-pink panels with a mixture of pink, grey and white flecks to be turned into table tops, shelving and bench tops at Selfridges’ fitness studio at their London store. (Photos taken by Andrew Meredith)
Smile Plastics collaborated with Silo Studio to make a bespoke material for an installation at Bloomberg’s offices in London, made from Bloomberg’s own old computer keyboards. The project was commissioned by Arts Co.
Selfridges commissioned Smile Plastics to create the ‘plastics’ theme of their Material World season, which is installed in the atrium of Selfridges. The idea behind it was to invite visitors to question the materials we wear and the effects they have on our local and global communities. For the plastics instalment of the season we created two giant globes encrusted in beads (totalling around 3,000 individual beads) made from our yoghurt pot material, Alba. These were then suspended from the atrium next to a layered kidney bean also made from recycled yoghurt pots.
For their seasonal Christmas displays, Selfridges commissioned us to make a bright white material incorporating the Christmas metallics of blue, pink, gold and silver to resemble confetti.
Voodoo Ray’s wanted a bolder and more colourful version of our white Alba material – which included extra blue and black flecks – to be used as countertops and table tops at their new Peckham outlet.
