Floating Floor Advantages

The most obvious advantage associated with floating floors is that they can be laid down quickly and easily to achieve the look of real timber flooring. This means that you can give a room an upscale look without spending too much time or money. You won’t even necessarily have to hire anybody to help.
Additionally, floating floors generally offer strong sound insulation due to the fact that they have been laid over a subfloor system. Wooden flooring can often be noisy for anyone living below you, so it’s nice to have this problem mitigated. Any movement will even be spread across the floor, so unsightly gaps are less likely.
Floating floors are usually pre-coated to provide superior durability, and there are numerous styles to choose from.

Floating Floor Disadvantages

Unfortunately, some of the advantages of floating floors create their own drawbacks. The flexibility of this option means gaps are less likely to appear, but it also means that the boards typically wear out faster. This is especially true in environments which experience frequent variations in temperature, or in those where moisture levels are high.
Additionally, unlike structural wood flooring, a floating floor cannot be sanded once it starts to break down. The sealed finish will offer protection, but you’ll still need to replace the boards once they become too worn. For this reason, structural wood flooring could be considered a better long term investment.

Floating floors are popular for a reason. Not only do they look great, they achieve their style without putting you, or your bank account, through much strain. Just take the drawbacks into account, then consider exactly where you’ll be placing your flooring and how long you’d like it to last.

It may seem unlikely, but some of the best floors we’ve ever seen are those that have employed unusual materials rather than your standard wood, tiles, carpet or linoleum. Here’s some of the most outlandish we can think of, and we think you’ll agree that the creativity behind of these ideas is off the scale!

Old Leather Belts
TING is a design company that creates luxury products from salvaged materials. Recently they’ve been sourcing old leather belts, removing the metalwork, hand-cleaning them and then processing them as flooring. What you’re left with is an attractive, subtle and hard-wearing floor, with the colour and pattern balance predetermined before a single one is laid down. Ideal for a clothing store!

Bottle Caps
Take a look at the Bone House in Texas, an artists’ studio with an eye-catching bathroom floor created from thousands of colourful bottle caps. As an example of sustainable architecture this is hard to beat, very low-cost, zero carbon use, and removing waste from the environment. But given the amount of time you’d need to spend finding all the caps, it’s probably only suitable for very small rooms. A similar but more neutral effect could be gleaned by using pennies.

Paper Bags
Tearing old brown paper bags into shapes and laying them down allows for beautiful patterns. You simply arrange them however you want and then put a thin layer of polyurethane over them to seal the floor. Owners of floors such as this reckon they look like a hybrid of cork, hardwood and leather, and we’d imagine they’re pretty pleased with the price-tag as well!

Wine Corks
The perfect flooring solution for a vineyard, or anyone with a passion for the fruits of the vine, wine cork floors look lovely, and feel great beneath your feet too. A floor of this was created for another room at the Bone House, with around 72 corks per square foot needed, so if you’d like to follow suit, better start drinking.

Visiting a carpet website or shop can be an overwhelming experience as there are so many different types of carpet. Unless you have a good idea of the type of carpet you want from the start you may be thrown by the amount of choices. Carpets are classed by either the materials or methods used to make them. And, to add to the confusion, you also get carpets classed by their country of origin, Persian carpets for example.

Firstly let’s consider ‘pile’. This term simply means how the carpet fibres are structured. There are two different piles of carpets: Loop pile and Cut pile. Loop pile is how every carpet starts with rows of looped fabric woven into a carpet backing. If you then snip the loops at the top to create single strands of fibre you achieve the cut look. So your first choice will be to decide between loop or cut pile, or a combination of both. Each type has a distinctive look and feel and is better suited to some rooms more than others:

• Loop pile carpets are similar to natural flooring like sisal. The loops create a high level of bounce and are very hard wearing so ideal for high footfall areas. But they are not that comfortable to walk on without shoes. Also not recommended in rooms that cats and dogs frequent as claws can pull the ‘loops’ and damage the carpet.
• Level loop or Berber carpets have one length of loop throughout which gives the carpet an even feel or look.
• Twisted pile is a cut pile carpet where the strands are twisted together to give them more strength. They therefore have a coarser feel but are more hard wearing and easy to clean.
• Frieze carpets are the most durable form of cut pile carpets. They are highly twisted with short fibres that hide footprints and vacuum marks.
• Saxony carpets are cut pile carpets that have longer strands known as deep pile. They feel comfortable underfoot but can flatten down easily so are mostly recommended for living rooms and bedrooms.
• Velvet or plush carpets are also cut pile but use soft, untwisted fibres to give the most luxurious experience. Highly recommended for bedrooms.

So don’t forget to match your type of carpet to each room. A bathroom or kitchen will need heavy duty, stain and water resistant carpet. A hallway that is trodden on frequently will also require a heavy duty carpet. Whereas in your bedroom you can indulge yourself in the softest and most comfortable foot pleasers!

Explore the rest of our website for more help choosing the right type of carpet.

The most significant factor is comfort under foot. The soft surface and cushioning effect of carpet makes it the easiest option for your feet. It also provides excellent warmth and acts as an additional insulator in your home, helping with your energy efficiency.

Carpet is also a lot ‘quieter’ than other forms of flooring. It stifles foot noise, reduces that empty room echo sound and blocks noise from travelling as much between floors. And don’t forget it’s a lot safer. You are not as likely to have a serious accident on your carpet as it is non-slip and provides a cushioned fall. And if you drop any fragile items they are less likely to be damaged.

Nor is carpet an expensive option as typically it costs less than other types of popular flooring. You should be able to buy your carpet and have it professionally fitted for less than hardwood or tile floorings. Some people think that it is harder to keep carpet clean but most made today are highly stain-resistant and very easy to maintain.

Last but not least is decoration. A lot of people now act as their own ‘Interior Designer’ and as you can get carpet in any style, design, colour or pattern it has become an integral part of decorating a room.

So, for all these reasons, carpet is still typically the number one flooring choice, featuring in several rooms of a house. For more information on carpet and other flooring solutions, please take a moment to explore the rest of our informational website.