Ocean liner, the QE2 celebrates 50th anniversary

Some 2 million feet of our Formica Laminate was used across the ship on everything from first-class cabins, the coffee shop, washrooms and toilets to passageways and stairways. In 2013, here at Formica Group we celebrated our 100th anniversary in business with a book about our history; Formica Forever. In the book written in conjunction with Metropolis Books we explain more about the QE2…

“Formica Laminate was just as critical as it had been to the Queen Mary when the daughter ship was designed, the Queen Elizabeth 2. The QE2 began service in 1969, the year of the first moon landing and Woodstock.”

“Some 2 million square feet of Formica Laminate were used in spaces on the QE2. Passageways and stairways are color-coded. Pop graphics decorate modernist lounges outfitted with Bertoia chairs and Saarinen tables. The interior design team headed by Dennis Lennon worked for some three years to select the appropriate types of laminates.”

“For first-class cabins it was a velour-textured Formica Laminate. In the Jukebox, a lounge catering to teenage passengers, were bold graphics and colors, and silhouetted imagery designed by Royal College of Art Students. In a coffee shop visitors found bold stripes of poppy blue and yellow, and in washrooms and toilets, textured, weave-finished materials. The ladies lounges were equipped with classic Formica Laminate “vanitories” the QE2 was in effect a floating laboratory for Formica brand products of the 1960s.”

Learn more about our laminate for the Marine industry.