The right floor covering on top of underfloor heating

It’s effi­cient, provides a com­fort­able room cli­mate and increases the qual­ity of liv­ing. Even the ancient Romans appre­ci­ated the bene­fits of under­floor heat­ing. Do you also wish for cosy warmth under­foot? We can tell you exactly which floor cov­er­ing is best suited for this pur­pose and what you need to con­sider when installing it.

1. Suitable floor coverings

Thanks to their excel­lent con­duct­iv­ity, tiles, nat­ur­al stone and ceram­ic slabs are the first choice for installing on top of under­floor heat­ing. These mater­i­als have a rel­at­ively low heat trans­fer res­ist­ance. This means that the floors are par­tic­u­larly well able to store and release heat dir­ectly and evenly to the sur­round­ing area. Little or no energy is lost, which can sig­ni­fic­antly increase the effect­ive­ness of the under­floor heat­ing sys­tem.

2. Always use full-surface bonding

Also par­quet and lam­in­ate can be laid on under­floor heat­ing sys­tems even though wood has a rel­at­ively high thermal res­ist­ance. How­ever, this is not a task for do-it-your­­selfers but only for exper­i­enced pro­fes­sion­als. In all cases, the floor cov­er­ing must be bon­ded over the entire sur­face area. Why? Because float­ing install­a­tion pro­duces an air space between the floor cov­er­ing and the screed. The heat radi­ated by the heat­ing sys­tem first flows into this inter­me­di­ate lay­er before it heats up the floor cov­er­ing. As a res­ult, it takes rel­at­ively long for the room to become warm and cosy.