Flooring

Top 4 Areas Of Concern To Consider Before Making The Choice On Your Office Flooring

Top 4 Areas Of Concern To Consider Before Making The Choice On Your Office Flooring 1 Photo Courtesy: Rob Brewer

Choosing the flooring for your office is an important decision that will affect both the aesthetics and the functionality of your office. While it is important to consider your personal taste, you also have to remember that there are others present in the office.

Think about your employees, clients and visitors when making the final decision. It is a good idea to listen to professional opinions in order to get the floor that will enhance the overall décor. Following are four helpful tips when choosing office flooring that you can consider:

Traffic in the Area

Top 4 Areas Of Concern To Consider Before Making The Choice On Your Office Flooring 2 Photo Courtesy: Shlomi Fish

It is important to think about the traffic in the area when choosing flooring material. A busy or high traffic area like the lobby or reception will require flooring that is strong and durable. You should remember that darker colors are more likely to show signs of the high traffic. If you install hardwood floors, regular maintenance through recoating will help to protect the floor finish. The type of wood and the finish, will determine how the floor fairs. Using floor mats in the high traffic areas can also help to protect the floor.

Overall Décor

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Photo Courtesy: Daniel Stockman

The office design and décor will determine the floor that will work best. It is important to look for the material and color that will complement the overall look, from the furnishings to the accessories. Dark colors make the space look smaller, while giving the room a more traditional or formal feel.

Light colors make the space look more open and airy, and they are more suitable for a more casual or contemporary office. There are many colors to choose from but it is important to look for those that are suitable for the office. Look for flooring that will enhance each room and bring out its unique personality.

Room Function

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Photo Courtesy: Chris Chan

A floor that is suitable for a doctor’s office will be different from that of a lawyer or marketer’s office. You need to consider the function for the office when choosing the floor. You can choose different materials for the kitchen or lunch areas. You also need to think about the work going on in the office, as this will help you to think about issues like muffled flooring, flooring suitable for swivel chairs and other factors. Make sure that you consider the comfort of all the users.

Floor Maintenance

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Nightly Cleaning Services in Frederick, Maryland – Photo Courtesy: Sean Mulgrew

You need to think about the maintenance requirements when choosing flooring. Some types of floors will require more maintenance than others will. It is important to get reputable professional services to clean the office floor in order to ensure that your floor is properly maintained. Make sure that those responsible for cleaning and maintenance have experience dealing with your floor type. It is important to find out the best cleaning process and products during the floor installation.

You need to ask questions before choosing office flooring so that you can avoid problems down the road. Buying flooring from a reputable manufacturer will help to ensure that you get the best quality materials. Think about the durability of the floor so that you can avoid frequent renovations. Also, talking to a good experienced contractor will help to ensure that you get the best floor for your business premises.

Ridley Pierce, the author of this article, is a self-professed blogger who likes nothing more than to write in his spare time. By day, he works for a well established company providing customers with hardwood flooring in Toronto.

Filed Under: Flooring Tagged With: flooring

Magnificent Marble In Your Home

by Mark Whinehouse · Leave a Comment

Magnificent Marble In Your Home 1 One of the most beautiful monument ever made – The Taj Mahal – is entirely made of marble. Photo Courtesy: Rachel Dale

When you think about luxury homes and their expensive furnishings, marble comes to your mind instantly. It is such an elegant and beautiful substance that it is hard to believe that it comes from the ground beneath our feet. Marble has been used for palaces and buildings of great importance for many centuries.

In recent years it has become more accessible for us mere mortals, and now you are able to buy the marble in slabs, and shape it for your own use. It is not an easy material to work with and here we look at the various uses and applications you may wish to use it for.

Magnificent Marble In Your Home 2 Marble can impart an elegant look to any room in your house, like this kitchen above designed by Tri State Stone of Newark, New Jeresy.

Greeks And Romans, and You?

Magnificent Marble – The Christina Monument in the Augustinian church of Antonio Canova, Vienna, Austria is a work of art. Here is a detailed angel resting on the lion.
Photo Courtesy: Dorena

The period dramas on television always use a marble floor when they revisit Ancient Greece and Rome; it lends an image of luxury and classic style to any scene. In this day and age of fake wooden floors and plastic worktops, it is nice to see something a bit more permanent. But can you really work with such a material without the proper tools and a lot of expertise?

Marble – The Facts

Marble belongs to the family of stones known as metamorphic rock and it is made up from recrystallized carbonate minerals, usually dolomite or calcite. It is usually used for sculpting statues and in the building trade. White marble is generally used for sculptures and tends to give off a waxy look which lends ‘life’ to the finished article.

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The construction trade uses a mixture of calcite, dolomite or serpentine. This type of marble is much easier to polish. Pakistan is the chief exporter of marble, at over 100,000 tonnes per year. China is the largest importer worldwide and imports nearly 70,000 tonnes per year.

In Your Home

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Whilst marble is undoubtedly a beautiful material to look at, it is far from perfect as a building medium. Although extremely hard and vitreous, it can also suffer from scratches quite easily. Unlike its bedfellow, granite, marble is quite delicate in terms of resistance. However, it can be used as a countertop if it is treated and sealed correctly. Usually a homeowner will consider the practical issues of marble and compare these with the class and beauty on offer. As you can imagine, the form beats function most of the time in this equation!

Marble Walls

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A marble wall is something to behold; they really add so much to the overall ambience of whatever room they adorn. The scratch issue is not pertinent in this case, and the stunning colors and shades are unmatchable as a wall medium. I’m sure there will be a plastic facsimile of marble walling one day, but that is all it ever will be.

Marble Floors

Magnificent Marble In Your Home 7 Another beautiful kitchen and floor designed by Tri State Stone.

If you are thinking about a marble floor, it is really best to use the professionals to fit these. But you should think hard about the particular design you want. A lighter floor may seem very pretty, but a darker one will add warmth to the visual aspect. As marble is so expensive, it is a good idea to think about marble tiles for your floor. If they become damaged, you will only have a small piece to replace instead of the whole floor!

Mark Whinehouse is an interior decorator by profession. He is a fan of marble and openly suggests it to most of his clients as it provides a royal feel to the home. He deals with some of the best suppliers of marble in NJ, as he believes in providing only the best to his clients.

Filed Under: Flooring, Home Interior Tagged With: granite, home improvement ideas, home improvement tips

5 Unusual DIY Flooring Ideas

by Daley James · Leave a Comment

Sun Floor – Photo Courtesy: Mike

Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Grand Designs or spent any time online searching for alternative DIY designs will be well aware that there are some incredibly eccentric people out there who love to see items of all types, shapes and sizes turned into something incredible for their homes. There are hundreds of bizarre examples to choose from, and some of the more eclectic choices have come in the flooring industry. It has become a modern craze to do something a little different with your floor space, and one of the greatest things about most of these weird and wonderful designs is that almost all of them are eco-friendly alternatives to traditional forms of flooring that find a use for materials that might have just been discarded otherwise.

1. Whiskey Barrel Flooring

Whiskey Barrel Flooring by McKay Flooring

The whiskey barrel has become a popular choice in bars, restaurants and homes that want an old school, authentic look of solid oak that is unfinished and lived in. The Glasgow based flooring company McKay Flooring came up with the idea to turn this age old barrels into flooring, and it looks pretty spectacular to the eye. If you wanted to install a bar or games room in your home, this is what you would want to use for your floors.

2. Glass Flooring

A fabric shop installed clear glass floors so that the old streets of Jerusalem can be seen. – Photo by James Emery

If you want to go a little further into making your home or business look ultra-modern and very cool, having glass flooring installed on your mezzanine level or stairs will give the area a very sleek design. These glass tiles are 6 inches thick and completely reflective, meaning that when coupled with LED lighting, they can be used to alter the mood of a room.

3. Leather Flooring

A beautifully designed Leather and Wood floor by Seward Construction CO of Denver, Colorado.

A growing trend for incorporating leather flooring into living areas has emerged out of the blue and the signs are good that they will become more popular, especially in homes that require a smart and sophisticated look. Chocolate brown is the most chosen color so far, and the durability of the leather design has been praised amongst the owners that have fitted leather flooring into their homes. In America, there is one particular store that has created floor tiles out of leather belts. They are pretty expensive to get fitted, and probably lead to a lot of men walking around with looser trousers.

4. Radiated Heat Flooring

Radiant heat lines being laid in a room floor – Photo Courtesy: Donna

A very eco-friendly alternative to regular flooring is to have radiated heat flooring installed. The majority of the energy used to heat a home is lost because it is lost immediately. What radiant floors achieve is transferring the warmth directly to you as you come in contact with the floor. Not only is this very cool, it’s also a great way to keep your heating bills down, which is great for your pocket and the environment.

5. Optical Illusion Tiles and Carpets

Stairs? – Photo Courtesy: Christine und David Schmitt

The optical illusion tiles and carpets serve no purpose other than to bring a huge smile to the face of whoever sees them and to make geeks say ‘That’s cool!’ really loudly. It can be very confusing, but it can also be used as a cool marketing tool. A video game store in Paris uses an optical illusion carpet to give customers the floor of the illusion of being in a ‘vortex’. It is actually designed by drawing bent lines in a particular order, but messes with your head either way!

This article was written by Daley on behalf of Ecotile, a company specialising in durable and environmentally friendly flooring solutions.

Filed Under: DIY Projects, Eco-Friendly Ideas, Flooring Tagged With: design, flooring

Choosing Your Flooring – The Big Three

by Jamie Kirk · Leave a Comment

Photo Courtesy: Olger Fallas

When it comes to choosing the best flooring for your home there are many different options and many different considerations for each. Deciding what will best suit your purposes can be difficult, especially for some of the more unusual rooms such as conservatories or porches. Here we will look at some of the more common options when it comes to flooring, and what their individual pros and cons are, to help you decide.

Carpet

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Kelly and Brigette relaxing on a carpeted floor. Photo by Scott cutler

Carpet is perhaps the most common type of flooring around the rooms of the house such as the living room and bedrooms. This is because it’s both soft and warm making it a great thing to step out onto in the night and meaning you can lie on it and roll around with the dog after Christmas dinner. Carpet is also relatively cheap and it comes with the most versatility with a huge number of patterns and styles. As it’s soft, it also won’t dent or crack and if you fall over you won’t break as many bones!

That said though, carpet does have its weaknesses. For one, the small carpet fibers and absorbent nature make it easy to get dirty and difficult to clean. These small carpet fibers, of course, are able to hide small particles of dust, dead skin and other debris and it is nigh impossible to get those out without a professional carpet cleaner. That also makes the carpet more unhygienic, and because it can stain easily too, it also makes carpet less of a long term investment. Carpet also has a tendency to date quickly which is another reason why it doesn’t last as long.

Wood

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Newly installed wood floor by Mr.Thomas

Using wood or laminate is a good step up from carpet in that it’s much easier to clean (you can just use a dustpan and brush) and in that it won’t get damaged as easily (hardwood more so than laminate). It has a glossy look which is well suited to both luxury apartments and modern ‘professional’ accommodation.

That said though, wood is susceptible to some issues, such as termites and rot, and can still stain on occasion and is more likely to get scratched or chipped than concrete. At the same time it is perhaps the least versatile of the flooring options as you can only really get it in wooden shades.

Stone

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Black Granite Floor – Photo Courtesy: Andy Franklin

Stone flooring such as granite or quartz is the most durable and long lasting of all flooring and it’s very difficult to damage, meaning that it will last a long time and can raise the value of a property. It’s also more versatile than wood and comes in a number of shades and is very easy to keep clean and very hygienic.

That said, stone is also very cold both to the touch and in terms of its effect on the rest of the room. This means it’s not ideal to step out of bed onto in the middle of the night. It also has the downside of being very solid which can lead to injury if someone should fall, and of being potentially slippery.

This guest post was written by Jamie Kirk; a home improvement blogger from UK. You can use cheap conservatory quotes service on his site to get more details on conservatories and home improvement.

Filed Under: Flooring Tagged With: flooring, home improvement