Durable and tough: a flooring material with “taker qualities”

Bath­rooms and hobby rooms are sub­ject to high wear and tear. That’s why they require a hard-wear­ing, robust but at the same time easy to main­tain floor cov­er­ing such as vinyl. With this type of floor­ing, you need not be afraid of a ham­mer drop­ping or water slosh­ing out of the bathtub. Moreover, vinyl floor­ing is warm to the feet, soft and there­fore gentle on the joints. On top, it comes with a vir­tu­ally unlim­ited range of col­ors and decors that makes all your liv­ing dreams come true. If the vinyl tiles or planks are firmly bon­ded to the sub­floor, no gaps or waves will form later on. But when installing the mater­i­al, always make sure to use only high-qual­ity, low-emis­­sion adhes­ives. They can be eas­ily iden­ti­fied by the EMICODE® EC1 qual­ity seal.

Bath­room floor­ing is expec­ted to have real “taker qual­it­ies”: it needs to with­stand not only splashes of water from the shower and thick clouds of steam but also kids splash­ing around in the bathtub. While in earli­er times many people opted for ceram­ic tiles, there is a true altern­at­ive today. Lux­ury vinyl tiles are just as water-repel­lent and easy to clean as clas­sic ceram­ic tiles, and warm to the feet on top.

Vinyl floor­ing (also called LVTs for lux­ury vinyl tiles) offers an almost infin­ite vari­ety of col­ors and decors. Today, man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­duce decept­ively real imit­a­tions of nat­ur­al stone, wood and con­crete floors. Since the sur­face is highly res­ist­ant to impact and scratches, vinyl floor­ing is also ideally suited for use in hobby rooms. Wheth­er a bil­liard ball or screw­driver acci­dent­ally falls down or a glass crashes to the floor with a party in full swing: no major harm done. Vinyl floor­ing for­gives the odd mis­hap. Home gyms need to be equipped with a resi­li­ent floor that yields under foot traffic and is easy on the joints. That’s why soft vinyl floor­ing is the pre­ferred choice instead of hard, unyield­ing lam­in­ate or stone­ware.

Due to the every­day wear and tear that bath- and hobby rooms are exposed to, it is advis­able to bond vinyl floor­ing over the entire floor sur­face. This way, it always stays firmly in place and does not shift like loose-lay floor­ing. Before apply­ing the adhes­ive, the sub­floor must be dry and com­pletely level. Oth­er­wise, mois­ture will later col­lect under the floor­ing and cause the devel­op­ment of mold. Bath­rooms addi­tion­ally require expert seal­ing of the vinyl floor­ing. Seal­ing and install­a­tion should best be done by a pro­fes­sion­al floor lay­er.