The process of choosing the right flooring product can be distilled to a simple equation: match performance and durability to the required application, and nail the aesthetic! That doesn’t mean you’re restricted to predictable options, though. The days of defaulting to carpet in the living spaces, lino in the kitchen and floor tiles in the bathroom are long gone. There are myriad solutions to that simple equation, and creative thinking can yield flooring solutions that surprise, delight and perform.
When we refer to the performance of home flooring, we’re talking about matching the physical properties of a floor to its intended use. That’s why tile flooring, stone flooring and linoleum have been so popular in kitchens for so long – they’re generally impervious to food and liquid spills, and can be quickly and easily wiped or mopped clean.
But kitchens have changed. They’re now most commonly designed as a zone within an open living space rather than as a discrete room. And more often than not, whether that open living space is in a new home or a renovation, it’s built on a concrete slab. For that reason, and because the performance of concrete flooring matches the requirements of home kitchens, polished concrete floors have quickly become very popular. Previously they might’ve been considered more appropriate for industrial and commercial settings, but the aesthetic is now very much on-trend for residential architecture.
There’s room for more design nuance in a residential setting than in a factory, too, so we see terrazzo concrete slabs, terrazzo concrete tiles, polished concrete tiles and other products that bring different visual characteristics. There’s even a solution for those wanting the look without laying a concrete slab – 10-millimetre-thick polished concrete overlay can be installed over existing floorboards!
The complication to this all-concrete solution comes elsewhere in the open living space, particularly in the lounge zone, where a softer or more textured floor is desirable. One option is to buy a rug. This might sound obvious, and a little too simple, but there are so many beautiful hand-tufted rugs and hand-woven rugs available, choosing one is a real pleasure. Laying a feature rug like this also highlights the role that flooring plays, alongside furniture and wall surfaces, in differentiating between the functional zones within a single interior volume.
Another option is to lay timber flooring over the top of the slab – engineered timber flooring, or floating floorboards, offer similar easy-to-clean performance to concrete but with the warmth of woodgrain, as well as the diverse visual appearance and tones of different hardwoods (spotted gum flooring and blackbutt flooring are two great Australian examples). In a renovation or extension, engineered hardwood flooring can help to achieve consistency with timber flooring throughout the original part of the house, and if you’re still set on the idea of choosing a rug, that works well on timber too!
In bathrooms, performance is mostly about coping with water from the bath and shower, and for this reason, floor tiles still predominate. But even within this format, countless different looks and feels can be achieved, depending on the size and material of tiles chosen – ceramic tiles, stone tiles and porcelain tiles come in a raft of colours and marking patterns, while dramatically striated marble tiles and marble slabs have premium connotations established over a few thousand years of residential and civic fitouts!
In the other “private” rooms in a home – bedrooms – we might think that flooring performance is more about how a floor feels underfoot than what it does. But if we consider the popular choice of broadloom carpet, we see that it is not just a soft surface for bare feet, it provides warmth and reduces noise associated with movement – both highly desirable attributes when you’re trying to get some shut-eye.
The two key aspects of flooring in commercial buildings are the need to cope with high volumes of foot-traffic, and the requirements of specialty applications such as healthcare flooring, aged-care flooring, education flooring, corporate flooring and the like.
In high-traffic areas, public-space flooring must be considered as a key element in the overall design solution – circulation paths determine where the most durable floor products are required, such as entrance flooring, performance carpet, and rubber wall bases in halls and corridors; carpet tiles and acoustic flooring absorb sound, in concert with acoustic spatial design; and tactile ground-surface indicators (TGSIs) provide accessibility for vision-impaired occupants.
Cleaning and maintenance of these large, high-traffic floors is also an important consideration, as the time required to regularly clean or repair retail flooring or office flooring has a direct impact on the cost of operating the building. Vinyl flooring and laminate flooring, for example, can replicate the look of timber or stone but without the need for regular polishing. Modular products such as nylon carpet tiles, loop-pile carpet tiles, linoleum tiles and vinyl planks can easily be replaced piece-by-piece, negating the cost of replacing an entire flooring surface as a result of isolated damage or wear and tear.
Non-slip flooring is a priority in many applications, but especially in healthcare and aged-care facilities, where PUR safety flooring, vinyl safety flooring, anti-slip floor coatings and anti-slip stair nosing can reduce the risk of vulnerable people sustaining injuries from falls. Hygiene is also a major consideration for hospitals, where easy-to-clean flooring can be a matter of life and death. By contrast, when specifying school flooring, there’s a need for a range of floorcoverings to match different spaces and activities, including sports flooring solutions like vinyl sports flooring or rubber flooring, highly resilient flooring that can cope with desks being dragged and chairs being toppled, and perhaps even digital-print vinyl flooring to bring a classroom to life in an inspiring way.
Floor durability and performance are also important as determining factors in the sustainability of a building – the longer a floor lasts, the fewer the resources that are required to dispose of the expired product, and make and install its replacement material. Product choice is also a determining factor, of course, as there are many flooring products available that have either been made from recycled content or can be partially or fully recycled at the end of their lifecycle. And choosing low-VOC flooring for any application makes for a generally healthier environment.
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