5 factors to consider when choosing commercial flooring

Visualise carpet tiles in commercial environment

Choosing the ideal floor covering for a commercial flooring project requires a lot of considerations. This post outlines five factors that you probably already have on your checklist when selecting highly functional yet stylish floor coverings.

5 Factors to Consider When Choosing Commercial Flooring

Floor covering is an integral part of interior spaces in commercial buildings. Besides withstanding heavy traffic in the workplace, office flooring also serves as a cosy accessory and can also be used to make a statement or define your style, as office spaces have become less rigid and formal.

It is, therefore, not enough to consider functionality alone when choosing a suitable material for commercial flooring in the current era of evolving corporate culture. If you’re seeking to build a cool workplace or you’re looking to transform an existing office into a trendier workspace, here are five factors that you should consider.

1. Sustainability

Not a new phenomena but more people are becoming environmentally conscious and it is a pre-requisite considerations in many design projects. Sustainable, reusable and recycle content materials are dominating the floor covering manufacturing industry, as they are friendlier to the environment. While some materials have stronger credentials than others the choice is wide, which still allows for a great combination of textures, look and feel.

2. Creative designs

The traditional workspace was often dull, rigid, and very formal. Today, thanks to a more robust and youthful workforce, offices are now employing more creative designs to attract and retain younger talent. This is why geometric shapes (such a hexxtiles and herringbone), bold patterns, and vibrant colours (such as Visualise and Trend) are quickly replacing traditional monochrome commercial flooring. This factor has contributed greatly to the rise of modular flooring in the commercial sector due to their flexibility and ability to complement any workspace design.

3. Safety

Safety in the workplace contributes greatly to workplace ethics, and it should be fundamental to workspace design. For the safety of employees in the workplace, you should ensure that your choice of flooring material is compliant with the governments’ regulations for commercial floors. One major factor that can help you choose safe material for workspace flooring is considering slip resistance, especially when looking at floor coverings in entrances and areas where spills might be more common. We wrote a useful article some time back on understanding slip ratings, which you might find useful. Considering barrier tiles and entrance matting systems has highly beneficial safety implications, as well as keeping the rest of your flooring covering attractive and easier to maintain.

4. Luxury as a trend

Luxury is no longer a reserve for rich and affluent homeowners as the trend is now becoming an important feature of commercial flooring. Designers are using luxury vinyl tiles made from quality and affordable materials and stylish, textured carpet tiles to bring elegance and cosiness into office interiors. This is part of the resimercial trend we highlighted in a previous piece on design trends and how this trend brings considerable tangible benefits to an organisation.

5. Ease of maintenance

Due to heavy traffic, commercial floors could potentially wear out faster than domestic floor covering. They can also become soiled faster than floors in residential buildings. It is, therefore, essential that you look at the durability of any commercial flooring material and its ease of cleaning before installation. This is easily solved by taking a quick look at the manufacturer’s guidance to cleaning and maintenance but also the various flooring symbols you see on a manufacturer’s specification documentation. The key ones being wear rating class 33 (for heavy contract use), the castor chair test, and considerations such as stain resistance and colour fastness.

Office colour schemes chosen by top interior designers

Office colour schemes - interior design

Productivity in workplaces is affected by lots of things, including interior decoration. We look at what professional interior designers recommend for 2018 in this article.

Boosting productivity within the office doesn’t just relate to motivating the workforce via accepted methods or training, as the work environment can also play a large part. Choosing the right colour scheme for your workplace can have a surprising effect on employee creativity, focus and energy. Some of the top office colour schemes for 2018 to enhance productivity, as recommended by interior design professionals include:

Deep green

A dark green in a satin or matte finish adds a dramatic effect to any office and works well with artificial light, as well as natural daylight. Using strong green colours like this for walls or flooring helps to promote a calming and harmonious effect, as green is a natural colour which is present within nature and promotes feelings of renewal and life, while adding a sense of balance and safety to promote productive working.

Off-white

A creamy, off-white tone in offices helps promote a warm glow, particularly when offices features lots of natural sunlight. Partnering off-white walls with a bold splash of colour is one way to add a dramatic effect to the office, and choosing the right splash of colour for features will certainly boost employee moods.

Deep blue

Deep blue is a great choice of colour for creatives and can help inspire and motivate employees to produce their best work. The colour blue can be both relaxing and tranquil, giving hints of the oceans and sky. Coupling deep blue carpet tiling or commercial carpets with the warm tones of creamy off-white will certainly help ensure employees are in the best possible mood throughout the day and adding natural, lush plants or shrubs to office spaces can create an even more positive workspace to increase productivity and enhance mood.

Grey

Grey is an understated and classic colour for offices, which can be extremely calming and looks fabulous when teamed with bright pops of colour in accessories, carpeting or furnishings. Misty grey with a slight blue or mauve tint is a lovely choice for offices and works well when different styles of artwork are displayed on walls. The pictures you choose for your offices and lobby areas can be extremely inspirational for employees and visitors and help create an elegant look which is sure to enhance productivity. Additionally, paler grey office walls can be bought to life when the right colour carpet is in place, and just one colourful accent wall in offices will certainly add a touch of vigour and creativity to promote employees’ moods and increase levels of work.

Tinted whites

White is also a traditional choice for office walls and opting for white paints with just a hint of colour can add a really warm glow, choose whites with a hint of pink or yellow to create a welcoming office space that looks clean and refreshing and helps enhance worker moods by giving employees a bright place in which to work. White office walls are a brilliant backdrop to dramatic furnishings or carpets and will work well with any colour really.

5 bold colours that belong in your office

Freedom with hexagonal carpet tiles in office

Introducing bold colour to your workplace might seem risky, but get it right and the advantages in productivity and creativity are more than worth it.

Bold colour splashed across a wall or floor can inspire confidence and creativity or create that positive first impression. It can even make the difference between a successful brainstorming session and one where communication fails to happen. Using colour in office design has proven links with productivity, although the full picture is a complex one dependent on colour and saturation. Put simply, the bolder the colour the more stimulating it can be, depending on the task environment.

Purple: create the right first impression

In colour psychology, purple is associated with quality, sophistication and royalty. Consider using stunning Fibre Optic Hexxtile flooring in a lobby to create a first impression that imprints those qualities on your visitor from the minute they enter your office.

Yellow: foster decision making

Yellow energises and inspires positivity and confidence. But yellow can also create eyestrain and fatigue if splashed with too broad a brush. The ideal colour to promote creative thinking and decision making, why not use yellow as a wayfinding tool in the office?

We again recommend Hexxtiles in on-trend Broadband yellow to create ease of navigation around your building. Why not use the tiles to mark out a ‘yellow brick road’ or simply use yellow to delineate creative spaces marked out with accessories or even a stripe of yellow paint.

Red: attention to detail

Red creates a powerfully physical emotion that’s associated with the fight or flight reflex. That’s why it’s an ideal colour for alerting the brain to the need to get the fine details right.

You can use bold red accents or a floor covering like Hexxtile in Jet Engine Red and you’ll create a state of vigilance where tasks require a high level of caution and attention to detail. For tasks that involve a clear right or wrong answer, bold red heightens our ability to avoid mistakes.

Green: creativity and calm

Green unites the emotional intensity of yellow and the thoughtfulness of blue for calm creativity. Think of an intense colour block of Laser green carpet tiles put together with soothing natural textures of cork. Together these elements can create the right atmosphere of calm reflection for a quiet room or solo working pod.

Blue: successful brainstorming

Blue is something of a cliche in office colour psychology. Many office design schemes involve painting everything blue and adding orange accents as a supposedly failsafe recipe for productivity. But while there’s no doubt that blue aids clear communication and helps clear the mind for more intellectual tasks, it should be handled with care and kept for specific task environments.

Exploit the mindfulness of blue by creating a breakout space that introduces texture and geometry to create strong visual content – hardwearing Hexxtiles in Roomba marry a strong shape with a clear blue that brings to mind oceans and cloudless skies. It’s those cues that help blue create the ideal environment for exploring ideas and creating enduring solutions.

Play and productivity: using colour to enhance the employee experience

Colour enhancing office productivity

Want to create a more productive office? Or influence the way employees feel when they come to work every morning?

The happy shades and bold aesthetics referenced in the latest Antron Colour Trends Report are designed to encourage playfulness, creativity and productivity.

Colour can profoundly affect every aspect of your life. Play is essential for human development and happiness. By bringing these twin aesthetics together you can begin to infuse fun into your office design. Antron have taken a Bauhaus approach in their latest colour trend report, creating blocks of yellow, green, purple, blue and pink to spice up the office environment and to introduce playful elements.

The science of colour

The way we absorb and see light and colour is governed by the hypothalamus which controls much of our behaviour. But it’s not the colour itself that makes us behave in a certain way, but the intensity of the shade – the more intense, the more stimulating.

But the science of colour goes further. The psychological primary colours are red which stimulates the body, blue which affects the mind, and yellow which is associated with the ego and emotions. Interestingly, creating secondary colours means you harness the effects of them both – so purple affects the mind and body while green balances the mind and the emotions.

So how does colour affect fun and productivity in the office?

Play with colour

65% of employees are collaborating in the office at any one time. Creating a fun design allows employees to work together in an environment that can stimulate or soothe – and that in turn promotes creativity, enthusiasm and energy. The playful use of colours creates a real buzz in team areas used for collaboration and problem solving.

A colour block of Jet Engine Red Hexxtiles would create a sense of dynamism and energy in the office by associating the science of colour with a strong geometric shape. Or imagine a ribbon of yellow flooring leading your workforce to a breakout area where they can collaborate in a mindful environment.

Promote productivity through colour

If your office is a hive of mind workers, then a serene blue environment combining sea blue carpet and the soothing geomimicry of Freedom Bark flooring creates the right mood for productivity.

If you’re a designer or engaged in the creative industries, an optimistic yellow will appeal to your spirit of creativity.

Green, with its balance between mind and spirit may just be the perfect colour for the fun and productive office. Antron’s bold bright green is reminiscent of Pantone’s Greenery and works perfectly against neutral carpeting inspired by nature for a fresh and clean take on the geomimicry and colour blocking trends that are currently influencing open office design. Create an environment that makes your workers happy and they may experience a 20% jump in productivity.

Colour never exists in a vacuum. It’s the way you play with tones, intensity and contrasts that creates the most desirable effect. If you want to encourage productivity and creativity in 2019, bring together bold and bright colour with grids and geometric shapes. Try experimenting with Hexxtiles for an instant hit of colour blocking and don’t be afraid to let your office design play with the idea of fun.

Antron Trend Report 2019 guides designers and manufacturers

Antron Report Cover

The new report on colour and design trends from INVISTA Antron has just been released. Here’s a summary of they key points, which will no doubt influence the direction of the commercial flooring industry in 2019.

INVISTA Antron carpet fibre has released its latest colour trend report. The trend forecast is compiled with the input of a Dutch materials agency called Anne Marie Commandeur. It focuses on key drivers of commercial design trends in 2019.

This annual trend report has become an important indicator of how colour is likely to impact commercial space in the near future. What is more flooring companies pay close attention to it, which makes it a useful report for interior designers to consider.

2019

One of the fundamental focuses still appears to be ‘wellness’. Encouraging a proactive attitude that helps people feel comfortable and happy in the workplace, helping to drive creativity and collaboration. The emotional energy of employees will be fuelled by dynamic design, yet this is contrasted with a need to feel relaxed and closer to our natural surroundings.

Diversity, too, is a key focus. The mind-sets, tastes and circumstances of society need to be accommodated, and the design and colour trends Antron has put forward are the result of exploring countless directions. There are four key themes that have emerged, each exploring the impact colours have and how they link to shifts in mind-sets. The four themes are as follows:

Play

The theme is based on bold, happy shades that recognise the power of colour to spice up an environment and create patterns through blocking. Extroverted and avant-garde colours are used as a tool for self-expression to generate childlike optimism and fervour.  Also as part of this theme, we see a continued movement towards geometric, yet with more bold and striking graphic design. Puzzling shapes are seen to deliberately create dimensional confusion.

Primal

Primal directly contrasts ‘Play’, catering for our need to relax with a selection of more subdued and natural shades. The need for a calm and subdued palette that remains fluid. Bare and raw, hand-drawn, shaped, moulded, cast and excavated – these approaches are used to create clean designs that embrace imperfection and provide a sense of authenticity.

Taking this further, the report references combinations and newly formed composites of pattern created through mixing materials and textures; i.e. lab grown textures and colours. Through this a cultured rawness is created. We covered the significance of designers mixing material and texture across a range of products in our recent guest blog by Adele Orcajada from MaterialDriven.

Reflect

This palette explores the effects of sensory stimuli, utilising shades that suggest luminescence through light-capturing colours and gradient, grid and mélange patterns. In essence this trend explores the positive impact of light on our wellbeing.

Grow

This is the continued drive for a focus on nature, emphasising shades of green to bridge the gap between our natural surroundings and the man-made environments we are so used to. Geomimicry Design is part of this trend mimicking nature’s patterns, trying to capture nature’s comforting colours and lively surfaces, while also translating its textures. In case you were wondering how Geomimicry might differ from biomimicry – with biomimicry you need to be mimicking strategies for life (e.g. trees resist fire with thick, insulating cellulosic bark) – we found an interesting explanation in our search to understand what is being said.  

Don’t underestimate the power of good floor designs

Design and colour have a profound effect on human emotion in any environment. People want to feel healthy and inspired, all aspects of design including the flooring can fulfil these needs.

The trend of mixed textures

textures - bare foot on tiles

We asked material specialist Adele Orcajada from MaterialDriven to share her thoughts on another key trend of 2018 – mixing materials and textures in order to create a greater connection with our office surrounding .

Making spaces alive and fresh

There was a time when it was all the rage to have coordinated living room or bedroom sets, where every piece was part of the same collection and all the colours and prints came from the same harmonious palette.

Boring, right?

We have finally broken away from all of that, and have embraced diversity and contrasting colours and textures that make spaces alive and fresh. Mixing old with new, polished with matt or dots with stripes…we love all the possibilities! Not only reflected in interior design, we can see this trend on the facades of buildings, graphics for T-shirts and even jewellery.

In material making the trend is also catching on. Understanding material properties allows designers to layer and creatively combine materials that are unexpected, challenging our idea of how to categorise and understand materials.

Here are some of my favourites.

Royal College of Art – Motion Office by Jooyeon Jo  

Motion Office is a beautifully tactile, air-filled and tile-clad bed, wrapped in wood, metal and porcelain pieces. Designed to provide physical and cognitive well-being in an active, work environment, the highly sensory work is the graduating project of the MA Design Products student RCA. In this case the combination of materials doesn’t only play with your sight but also touch. The idea is that your feet will be stimulated, while at work, as you step on the range of pieces dispersed throughout the base material. What is interesting is that depending on the material you step on, the sensations that will come through your toes will change from soothing to stimulating. It’s true evidence of a material´s power to interact with human wellbeing. Read more about this project.

Kutleh

At Milan Design Week this year, MaterialDriven was fascinated by the work of Kutleh. This project was conceptualized and established by Architect Rula Yaghmour, who has an interest in various design disciplines. Her work is made up of off cuts and excess produced from cladding tiles used in construction projects. Combining various forms, textures and colours into layers, the final pieces become in itself a redefined raw material, one which designers can carve out their limitless creations from, and use to introduce innovative new forms. Also highlighted, through union and juxtaposition, are the many natural stones of the region and the properties that define each one. Visit their website to see for yourself the beautiful pieces that have been created.

Allgood

Allgood is one of the world’s leading companies in the supply of solutions for the door and door openings. With the launch of the Sembla range, in partnership with Ultrafabrics, Allgood offers a door handle with pops of colours and textures to grip on. The result is one of a kind, as it allows both users and designers to mix and match metal and fabric depending on the look and feel needs for each space. From pebbly textures, to glossy sheens every fabric interacts with the metal handle in a unique way.

 

How the right flooring can increase employee productivity

In this blog post, we’ll discuss the reasons why selecting the right commercial flooring can greatly benefit business performance. In short, these include improved employee health, morale, and comfort, which ultimately leads to increased employee productivity.

In the modern economy, where there is more competition than ever before, every company is looking for ways to increase their competitive advantage. Businesses now looking at everything, from implementing new technology to creating unprecedented levels of leisure spaces to improve their employees’ wellbeing.

We think one of the most overlooked ways that a company can increase their workers’ productivity and their competitive advantage, is by choosing the right style of commercial flooring. to prove this point, here are just a few reasons why selecting the right type of flooring can be beneficial to company performance.

1. Tackle excessive noise

Noise has been shown repeatedly to negatively impact worker productivity and performance. Moreover, high levels of noise can lead to health and wellness issues for employees. This can result in lost productivity through increased sick days. Impact noises, such as the sound of footsteps and the noise created by moving chairs, can be highly disruptive and compared to laminate flooring carpet is a clear winner here (for example: carpet without underlay, versus a wood or laminate floor, reduces impact noise by as much as 26dB, when concrete is the base floor).

Carpets have been shown to absorb sound up to 10 times greater than equivalent hard flooring (Source: The Building Performance Centre, Napier University, Edinburgh – 2004). And compared to hard flooring, the generated sounds in a carpeted room are lower. In addition, the duration of the reflected sounds is shorter, so there’s no irritating distortion. This enables people to talk more softly (Source: GUT, Gemeinschaft umweltfreundlicher Teppichboden e.V.).

2. Allow for different working practices

As the importance of health and wellness is becoming more and more recognised, companies across a variety of industries and sectors are now taking steps to ensure that they maximise their employees’ wellbeing, and thus increase productivity and performance. One aspect of this has been the rise of sit-to-stand working practices, which aim to limit the amount of time that employees spend immobile. Using appropriate flooring, such as carpet tiles is also an important consideration when implementing a sit-to-stand working environment, which reportedly can boost productivity by up more than 46%.

The rise of activity-based working (ABW), where employees do not have a set workstation but move around according to their task, has also seen companies experience greater productivity through keeping employees engaged and motivated. However, this means that more people are moving around the office more frequently, so matching design with the appropriate flooring to reduces the impact of noise, as well as considering how the flooring helps with zoning are very important factors. In the same way, finding the best flooring for the use of the space also needs to be a key design consideration at the start of any project.

3. Create the right environment

Choosing the right commercial flooring can help to maximise worker wellbeing by providing an aesthetically-pleasing environment to work in. This can have dramatic effects on company morale. Selecting commercial flooring which is blue in colour, for example, has been shown to boost productivity by creating a calming feeling, whilst green has a tendency to enhance the creativity and innovation of employees.

The ability of different colour scheme to differentiate between different spaces is naturally becoming more important with the rise of ABW in modern office spaces. As such, using creative colour schemes in your lighting and walling, while employing texture and colour in floor designs can help to clearly demarcate different areas of your office and facilitate much more natural movement within an ABW set-up.

4. Approaching office comfort from all angles

It will not be very surprising to learn that employees who are stuck in an office that is either too hot or too cold have dramatically reduced productivity levels. Whilst most people would think immediately think of air conditioning and heating as the remedy for an office space with inappropriate temperatures, selecting the right lighting, flooring, and wall designs can have dramatic effects on temperature within an office environment.

Selecting colours such as red can help to boost the warmth of the design scheme within an office, enhancing employees’ perception of the temperature. The use of carpet tiles, which act as very effective insulators, can ensure that the office environment remains a comfortable temperature all year round, thus maintaining high levels of productivity whatever the weather. Furthermore, combining the use of carpets with an appropriate colour scheme can help to dramatically improve the level of comfort that employees experience within the office.

The open plan office: a space of the past

Open plan offices are set to be a thing of the past, whilst they were popular in the 2000’s, they are no longer the most adapted solution to the modern way of working.

ABW, NCE or MEMO?

In recent years, the design press has questioned the planning choices of many offices which choose to go for an outdated open plan layout, when it is a known fact that this type of layout is not optimal for productivity. Open plan office spaces were very popular about a decade ago, but nowadays a better understanding of productivity has helped move beyond this kind of layout. The new trends in office layouts include Activity Based Workspaces (ABW) and Neighbourhood Choice based Environments (NCE) as well as more progressive concepts such as the Maker Environments, Mobile Occupants (MEMO). However, these new office layouts and ABW, in particular, offer their own set of planning challenges.

Modern office space should offer the possibility for workers to be mobile, gone are the days when they were expected to sit in the same spot all day in order to perform routine tasks. The office space needs to adapt to the business’ activities, which means designers must take into account the type of business the office will be used by. For example, an office occupied by a sales force will have very different requirements to one that is occupied by a research and development team.

Most offices were designed with sedentary behaviours in mind, however, in a modern working environment, workers need to move about in order to exchange ideas about a project they are working on together or find a quieter spot when doing a task that requires higher concentration. That is why ABW workspaces have become increasingly popular. These are designed to function as an eco-system which revolves around a central hub. These workspaces are designed with four specific ideas in mind: solo work, collaboration, learning, socialising and rejuvenating. Workers can move about in order to find the right spot for their current task rather than sitting in the same place all day. There’s no use being cooped up alone when working on a collaborative project or sitting in the middle of a discussion when researching independently. From an office design perspective, this new way of working offers many challenges as there is a need to create many different environments within one space.

Choosing different lighting and colour coding walls and floors can help create this degree of separation between spaces. Different coloured carpet tiles are especially versatile in creating individual workspaces around the office, making it easier for workers to both navigate to relevant areas as well as helping them adjust their mindset. Even creating spaces with carpet tiles that have a distinct pattern such as Hexxtile can help, or seamlessly transitioning from carpet to luxury vinyl tiles helps create a different space for a different purpose. Because a worker may have to move several times a day, the office must cater for increased mobility. There also needs to be a space in which the employees can rejuvenate and socialise because a happy workforce is a productive workforce.

Agile work solutions are set to evolve even further in the future and the concept of ABW will no doubt change with these evolutions. Office spaces will need to further adapt to these challenges and allow for even more mobility.

Like our featured image – see the Case Study

The benefits Resimercial Design

Resimercial office design

Resimercial design is the new big buzzword among companies looking to draw employees back into the office while providing an environment which maximises productivity and creativity.

Seeking to find the ideal balance between residential and commercial, a resimercial design tries to create an office environment in which employees find a sense of calm and ease, boosting their productivity and allowing them to flourish.

Blurred boundaries

Employees are being asked more than ever to be flexible within the workplace, with many roles becoming more dynamic, leading to companies requiring more from their workers. One of the ways to allow employees to be more creative in their approach to problem-solving is by creating a ‘homely’ environment, something which is far removed from the traditional office cubicles found in many office blocks.

Many large corporations are combining the essences of the workplace with those of normal residential properties to help their employees develop in a more natural environment. This involves incorporating tactile textures, flooring which evokes feelings of calm and warmness, and larger open multi-functional areas in which people can gather and discuss their projects.

Increasingly, people are asking to work from home, and employers have been pushed to accept this, along with the rise of flexi-working. However, companies are finding that the work produced when done from home is not of the same standard as in the office environment, thus causing them to offer incentives for employees to stay in the office. Equally, a Harvard study focusing on the water cooler effect has suggested that researchers who work in close proximity to other researchers often create papers of greater insight and quality. Therefore, the rise of resimercial design allows for a blurring of the definitive boundaries between working in the office and working from home, creating the best possible solution for employees to work at their optimal level.

Zoning

A trend within resimercial design is to have open areas, and a lack of internal walls closing areas off, as this doesn’t naturally recreate the multi-functional way we use our rooms at home. In order to ensure there is some sort of differentiation created, many designers are using zoning to create subtle boundaries between areas. By using different flooring throughout an area, the functionality and specific purpose of each area is retained due to this floor definition, while still adhering to the design features of a resimercial approach.

Raised floors are ideal for creating a subtle multi-level effect in different zones, while even something as subtle as different coloured carpet tiling can help to facilitate a separation between zones. Carpet tiling is also great for resimercial design as individual tiles can be easily installed and removed as required, offering a huge amount of flexibility to change your flooring to suit the business needs.

 

There is nothing old fashioned about sheet vinyl flooring

Durawood sheet vinyl in reception area

Vinyl flooring is hygienic and comes in a wide number of attractive designs that are sure to enhance the appearance of public buildings, but also has the advantage of being a cost-effective solution for many office locations.

There’s nothing old fashioned about contemporary vinyl sheet flooring, it offers modern designs and styles that will enhance the appearance of any workplace, often mimicking the feel and texture of the natural material it is designed to resemble.

Heavy duty vinyl flooring offers durability, slip-resistance and it is ideal for covering flooring defects. Large commercial spaces, especially shops, galleries, schools, etc. benefit from the supreme durability of vinyl flooring, as it is a hard wearing floor covering that maintains its attractive appearance for many years.

Many of the benefits of sheet vinyl flooring also make it a great solution for areas within your office premises:

Cost savings

With a very heavy commercial and heavy industrial rating, vinyl flooring such as Durawood will give excellent life-cycle cost.

Comfort

Vinyl floors are much warmer than stone or tiles and far more easy on the feet when compared to hard wood. Slip resistant vinyl flooring is the perfect choice for wet rooms, kitchens or breakout areas, where spills can be a frequent problem.

Hygiene

This is important in any workplace, where germs and bacteria can multiply quickly. Cleaning vinyl flooring is a simple and easy matter, and just a case of sweeping any crumbs or rubbish from the floor and then mopping over with warm, soapy water to return the floor covering to as good as-new appearance.

Vinyl floors also have a waterproof surface, meaning any spills or water splashes can be easily wiped up and won’t stain the surface of the tiles. The lack of joints also makes it easier to keep clean, what is more it can also be made totally waterproof.

It is important to remember vinyl flooring repels dust, therefore reducing the likelihood of dust mites, again making it a popular hygienic choice.

Variety

Vinyl floors can be found in a variety of different designs, ranging from natural wood floor appearances to stones, or abstract printed patterns. The days of poorly textured designs in vinyl are certainly a thing of the past, they now are able to reflect a highly professional image, while providing a beneficial and environmentally sounder solution to the substrate they are mimicking.