Harmonious look paired with healthy indoor climate

For dec­ades, tiles have been the stand­ard mater­i­al for use on bath­room floors. Today’s bath­rooms, how­ever, are no longer a merely func­tion­al space, but rather an integ­ral design ele­ment of the house or flat. With a soft, warm floor under your feet instead of hard, cold tiles, the bath­room can eas­ily become an oas­is of well-being. For this reas­on, lux­ury vinyl floor­ing has increas­ingly found its way into the bath­room – both on walls and floors. No prob­lem – as long as the sub­strate has been expertly sealed. EMICODE^®-cer­ti­fied products help you ensure a healthy indoor cli­mate.

It’s not sur­pris­ing that “design floor­ing” (which means lux­ury vinyl tiles or LVTs) is becom­ing increas­ingly pop­u­lar. These resi­li­ent floor cov­er­ings are avail­able in styl­ish looks with a large choice of col­ors and sur­face tex­tures. “Design floor­ing” can faith­fully repro­duce the look of real wood, con­crete, nat­ur­al stone or tiles. The res­ult is decept­ively real so that it is often almost indis­tin­guish­able from the ori­gin­al. A har­mo­ni­ous look can be cre­ated without any joints. At the same time, vinyl floor­ing is hard-wear­ing and retains its many advant­ages for a long time – even in wet rooms.

Mod­ern vinyl is not only extremely robust, resi­li­ent and hard-wear­ing, but also provides a soft feel­ing under­foot and is there­fore gentle on the joints. Ideally, it should be firmly bon­ded over the entire sur­face so that it can­’t shift. In addi­tion, it offers pleas­ant warmth under­foot – a sur­pris­ing con­trast to the “cold look” of mater­i­als such as nat­ur­al stone or tiles which it can imit­ate. Mois­ture can do no harm to vinyl floor­ing: it is there­fore easy to clean and can even be wet-wiped. Its insens­it­iv­ity to mois­ture is one of the reas­ons why vinyl floor­ing is par­tic­u­larly suit­able for use in bath­rooms and showers – on con­di­tion that it has been care­fully sealed.

Water must not be allowed to pen­et­rate under and behind bathtubs or shower trays. This is what DIN 18534, the new water­proof­ing stand­ard for interi­or applic­a­tions, stip­u­lates since 2017. Per­man­ent water­proof­ing is man­dat­ory so that the bath­room can be used without any prob­lems for up to 25 years. How­ever, the applic­a­tion of sil­ic­one seal­ants alone, espe­cially at corners and junc­tions, is not suf­fi­cient. In addi­tion, spe­cial edge seal­ing tapes or full-sur­­face water­proof­ing under and behind the bathtub are required.

To install vinyl floor­ing in the splash water area of the bath­room or in the shower, it is neces­sary to take the require­ments of DIN 18534 into account. It is there­fore advis­able to leave the expert water­proof­ing and install­a­tion of floor­ing to a pro­fes­sion­al floorer. He knows exactly where and how to seal in order to pre­vent later dam­age. Apart from the prop­er seal­ing work, also expert pre­par­a­tion of the sub­strate and applic­a­tion of a primer are of key import­ance.