Williams-Sonoma’s New Sustainable Home Brand Is Inspired by Vintage Textiles and Antique Furniture

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Williams-Sonoma, the world’s largest digital-first sustainable home retailer, has launched GreenRow, a new home brand using sustainable materials and manufacturing processes to make everything from furniture and lighting to table and bed linens, rugs, and dinnerware.

GreenRow is the first new brand launch from the San Francisco-based firm in a decade and is the product of an internal design and development process led by Jaimee Seabury, Williams-Sonoma's vice president of strategy and business development.

“When I came on board, I was asked, “If you were going to launch the most sustainable home brand in the world today, what would it look like?’” Seabury said. That challenge set in motion a roughly two years of research and development that included a “global tour” of meeting with Williams-Sonoma vendors all over the world.

“Our sourcing teams worked with our vendor community, which is used to us asking for transparency about their entire processes, to make every step as sustainable as possible,” Seabury said. “Our vendors were certainly up for the challenge.”

For example, Seabury worked with rug makers in India to source wool from lambs that emit less methane and dinnerware vendor in Portugal on finishing pieces with recycled glaze. GreenRow is selling two sets of 50 patchwork quilts made using remnants from a textile vendor in India, and it worked with its upholstery vendor in North Carolina to eliminate traditional polyfoam from every piece. Even its packaging and labeling processes are sustainable: there are no sew-in labels, only QR codes, and no single-use plastics used in any packaging—just cardboard boxes and tape made from recycled plastic.

The result is a collection of products featuring bright color, European-influenced design, globally sourced materials, and vintage-inspired detailing that feels at once boldly forward-looking in its mere existence yet familiar, comforting, and heirloom-worthy in its design. (Think: slipcovered furniture, table linens with ruffled and crocheted trim, and farmhouse tables with turned legs.)

“We researched what other sustainable home brands were doing and no one else was addressing the whole home and most of the sustainable product out there had a certain look and was not super comfortable,” says Seabury. “We also wanted to address the white space within the Williams-Sonoma portfolio, so we created this line with attention to color and detail we weren’t seeing elsewhere, and with a certain European sensibility.”

Beyond simply offering an alternative style option in the sustainable furniture category, GreenRow’s design sensibility ensures its product will mix more easily with vintage and antique pieces shoppers already own, from vintage and antique glass to the pieces designers love to buy vintage like oil paintings or leather chairs.

One of the most sustainable practices consumers can do is to “buy less and invest in pieces that are either easy updates or will last forever,” explained Seabury about some of the thinking that helped shaped the GreenRow product assortment. “In addition to designing into a timeless aesthetic, we also committed to utilizing sustainable manufacturing practices and teaching our customers how to care for our products in order to ensure their longevity.”

Although Williams-Sonoma describes itself as digital first, it is supporting the launch with of GreenRow with a catalogue. The catalogue will be printed on lightweight paper made with 100% recycled content using a clean printing process that involves no water and non-toxic inks that are “clean enough to drink,” said Seabury. Williams-Sonoma noted it has a “rich heritage of using catalogues to tell the full story of its brands and products to consumers.” Currently, it only plans to send one issue to celebrate GreenRow’s launch.

GreenRow is working with third-party organizations to certify products against industry-leading standards such as Textile Exchange’s Global Recycling Standard, Fair Trade USA and Nest’s Ethical Handcraft Program, to promote more sustainable production and worker well-being throughout the supply chain. Customers who purchase a solid wood furniture product from GreenRow will also participate in Williams-Sonoma’s tree planting program which plants a tree for every piece of indoor furniture containing at least 80% wood sold.

Starting today, you can shop the collection on GreenRow's website.

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