Floors Galore!

Happy New Year everyone! This year I decided to take the pressure off and instead of changing something about myself, I decided to change something about my home. My New Year resolution is to renovate my basement – something that has been on my ‘to do’ list for a very long time. With that comes a lot of new things, including flooring since I’m still working with the carpet that was put in long before I ever moved in. Since there are so many different choices in the world of flooring, it sparked the idea for this blog – I’m going to share with you some of the different flooring options available to us today as well as some of the pros and cons about each. One type of floor is not better than the other, in fact you will learn that each flooring type is suited to different needs. Let’s get started!

Wood Flooring: Ah, currently the most sought after type of flooring again since it knocked carpet off of the top. With this category we can go into two sub categories; hardwood and engineered. Hardwood is the real deal, milled from one piece of timber; oak, maple and hickory are pretty common types, just to name a few. What’s great about hardwood is durability and versatility; it can be sanded down again and again to be re-stained to a different color. It’s easy to clean with a simple solution of water and vinegar and therefore great for high traffic areas. While this all sounds great, some things to keep in mind about hardwood is that it is one of the most costly floors out there and you have to be prepared for gaps in the wood overtime since wood naturally expands and contracts with different temperatures. If you think you can solve these cons with engineered wood, you’re only partially right. Engineered wood is composed of wood layers underneath a veneer of hardwood. It tends to run about the same cost as hardwood, but it will stand up to temperature change much better than the real stuff even though in the end hardwood will last longer. Another big con to engineered wood is that if it can be refinished, it can usually only happen once; so be sure to pick a color that you won’t get sick of quickly!

Carpet Flooring: There are SO many options in the world of carpet and it seems as though the options keep growing. Firstly, we have broadloom carpet and carpet tiles. Broadloom carpet, the stuff that comes on the big rolls, is usually more cost efficient than carpet tiles since tiles are bought individually. Carpet tiles are great for commercial applications because if there is an irremovable stain, you can easily replace the one affected tile. Carpet tiles can also be used in residential settings and act as a built in area rug. For either broadloom carpet or tiles, the color and pattern options are endless and can be made of either natural or synthetic fibers. Both applications allow for sound absorption and will help add warmth and insulation to your space. So what’s so bad about carpet? Unfortunately, this flooring option is the hardest of them all to clean and maintain – it easily stains and traps dirt, making it hard to get back up. This application is not recommended for high traffic areas as it will show traffic patterns over time. It is recommended that you change your carpet every seven years.

Tile Flooring: Once again, another flooring with numerous types of colors, patterns and makeup. Here we are mostly working with two types, ceramic and porcelain; the two are very similar with the main difference being that porcelain tile is denser, therefore more durable and in the end more costly. Both types of tile are easy to clean and keep sterile and both can be used either indoors or out. Although the tile itself is easy to maintain, the grout that lies between each tile is not – grout can attract stains and be quite difficult to clean if not kept up with. Another downfall of tile is that it can feel very cold and hard under your feet although new developments such as radiant floor heating can help improve this situation. Somewhere in the middle of tile and hardwood you’ll find a new product called floating wood tile – a tile made to look like wood and even get installed in a similar manner so there is no need for adhesive or grout lines. To get the wood appearance, a synthetic material made to simulate wood or stone is covered with a laminate – meaning that similar to engineered wood, it cannot be refinished.

While these may be some of the main types of flooring currently available to us, they are by no means the only type. Stay tuned for our next blog which will be a continuation of some of the more unique applications like cork and bamboo!