Home Sweet Home

Choosing the right floor and floorcovering is an important aspect of furnishing your home — it is not only one of the most dominant decorative surfaces, it will also claim a large proportion of your furnishing budget.

An important aspect of Furnishing your Home

The type and quality of the floorcovering you choose should be appropriate for each room, just as the right colour and design are important. Poor quality flooring, ill-suited to the requirements of the room, will wear out quickly and end up costing you a lot more in the long run.

Floor Construction Materials

Concrete: An artificial rock which is normally on the ground in homes, but in certain instances may be suspended. ‘Slab on ground’ refers to concrete laid on a membrane directly onto prepared foundation soil. Raft slabs are designed to float on poor foundation soils. Good drainage is essential. A suspended concrete floor refers to concrete supported off the ground on a base structure. Concrete is rigid and offers good thermal mass and soundproofing. Timber: This is still the most commonly used material for domestic floors built on honeycomb walls. It may be a strip floor of individual solid timber boards, or a sheet material such as particle (chip) board or plywood. Timber provides a more resilient floor, but must he properly ventilated underneath to prevent moisture and rot problems. Tempered particle (chip) board is resistant to moisture and therefore especially suitable for wet areas.

Brick: Mainly used in the province of alternative builders; also used as paving.

Underlays

Many flooring finishes are not fixed directly to the main structural floor but to an underlay to ensure that the type of floor has no effect on the final finish. Common materials used as underlays are plywood for rigid and resilient tiles, hardboard for resilient tiles, and various applied materials, usually where rigid floor finishes are applied to non-rigid floor structures. Floor levelling compounds are also available.

Floor Finishes

Coatings: Timber structural floors can be sanded and finished with clear finishes, but other structural floor materials are normally covered.

Resilient tiles: These include studded rubber, vinyl in many variations, cork and cork composite, and linoleum. They are available in many colours and easy to keep looking good.

Sheet materials: These include sheet vinyls and linoleum, otherwise similar to tiles.

Parquetry: Consists of small timber strips or blocks, laid in various patterns, adhered to the floor and then clear finished. They are also now available in loose-lay interlocking tiles. Parquetry must be kept dry, or it will buckle.

Ceramic and quarry tiles: Now popular in most rooms of the house. The choice is from among ceramic, monocottura (single-fired), extruded quarry and terracotta tiles, available in various glaze levels and as nonslip tiles. They must be isolated from movement by slip joints or flexible adhesives, and have allowances made for expansion and contraction.

Stone: Most commonly used are slate and quartzite. More prestige materials increasing in popularity are marble, travertine and granite. They are all rigid and require a rigid subfloor. Carpet: Commonplace in most homes. Now choices include not only woven styles and patterns, but also materials such as wools, nylons, acrylics and other man-made fibres, as well as blends for all applications. It is important to match the expected traffic of the carpet to the carpet’s classification.

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