How to Choose the Right Flooring for Your Home
When creating and designing a home, you cannot overlook flooring – it affects the appearance of the space, visually connects the entire living area into a unified whole, and functionality also plays an important role. However, the choice of flooring in hardware stores and showrooms is incredibly large, and it is difficult to navigate through this maze without professional help. Should you make a choice based purely on aesthetics? Lean towards quality or choose the most affordable solution instead?
What should you consider first when choosing flooring? Before you head to the nearest store or showroom, think carefully about what criteria are most important to you when selecting flooring:
1. Usage load: does the floor need to withstand heavy traffic or do you spend time at home mainly alone?
2. Children and pets: are there children or pets in the family whose active play or activities could damage the floor?
3. Installation: are you planning to install the floor yourself and therefore looking for an easier solution, or will you use professional help?
4. Maintenance and cleaning: is the surface easy to clean and maintain?
5. Water resistance: does the flooring need to withstand greater moisture and water contact?
6. Underfloor heating: does the chosen flooring work well with underfloor heating?
7. Sunlight: does the room have large windows, so the floor needs to withstand bright sunlight and its bleaching and warming effect on the floor surface?
8. Comfort: do you prefer a warmer or cooler surface underfoot, or which surface texture is more pleasant?
What are the most acclaimed flooring options worth choosing for your home? Let's take a closer look at the main flooring solutions that are suitable for use in different conditions and, when used correctly, will serve you for years.
Solid wood parquet
If you prefer a durable, sustainable, and cozy solution, solid wood parquet is certainly the right choice. This practical and nature-friendly flooring can last for decades with proper maintenance, providing you with aesthetic beauty and comfort for a very long time.
Solid wood parquet's wide range of finishes and patterns helps create classical solutions, but also interior designs that emphasize individuality. Thus, herringbone parquet or French herringbone, also known as Chevron parquet, suits those who appreciate luxury and timeless elegance. Single-strip solid wood parquet, which imitates solid wood flooring in appearance, suits either a person who appreciates minimalist style with knot-free calm nature sorting, or a client who appreciates rustic style with sorting containing knots and patina marks. Basket, Dutch, and square patterns, or various patterns of panel parquet are distinctly different and help emphasize the uniqueness of your home.
Solid wood parquet is an excellent choice thanks to its easy maintenance and natural properties. Regular cleaning, oiling, or varnishing keeps it beautiful for years. In addition, solid wood parquet is a natural and healthy choice, as it does not contain or release harmful chemicals and helps reduce dust and allergen accumulation, making it an ideal solution for people with sensitive health.
Since homes increasingly use convenient underfloor heating, a legitimate question arises: does solid wood parquet also work in such cases? Since wood is a moderately good heat-conducting material, it can be successfully installed in rooms with underfloor heating. However, you must ensure that the parquet together with the underlayer is not too thick, and for floating installation, it is recommended to use a dense/heavy underlayer with low thermal resistance. White foam or expanded polystyrene bead-containing solutions are not good solutions for underfloor heating. Parquet with HDF middle layers has better heat transfer than conventional parquet, as the HDF layer is a dense material with low thermal resistance and heat transfer occurs quickly. For underfloor heating, thin mosaic parquet or industrial parquet also work well for use.
Quality solid wood parquet with an HDF layer must withstand mechanical damage, scratches, impact marks, and compression marks well. While solid wood parquet is generally not very water-resistant and excessive moisture can damage it, for example, Lindura single-strip parquet's AquaStop edge impregnation ensures its moisture resistance for up to 24 hours. Thus, parquet can be installed even in rooms with high humidity levels and in bathrooms. However, it should be noted that continuous heavy exposure to water can still damage the parquet, and in saunas and steam saunas and shower areas on the surface, you should use materials more suitable for this purpose. Short-term moisture exposure does not affect the parquet's appearance and nature, and the parquet is offered a warranty of up to 25 years in home conditions.
Vinyl parquet
Vinyl parquet has recently become a popular flooring and its popularity continues to grow. The main reason is the properties of vinyl parquet and also its affordable price. Quality vinyl parquet is even difficult to distinguish from solid wood parquet at first glance – it looks true and inviting. Vinyl parquet is a pleasantly warm material underfoot, especially if underfloor heating is in use. In addition, vinyl parquet is a good choice for families with small children and pets.
Benefits of vinyl parquet:
1. Easy to maintain: vinyl parquet is easy to clean and maintain.
2. Vinyl parquet is a water-resistant flooring and there are no moisture-related problems with it.
3. Vinyl parquet is resistant to scratches and mechanical damage.
4. Quiet: vinyl parquet, whether as a glued LVT or SPC solution or as a floating SPC flooring with integrated or quality underlayer, has low footfall noise.
5. Seamless solution: even with floating installation, because SPC vinyl parquet can be installed up to 20x20m without inter-room deformation joints.
6. Easy to update bathroom or entryway flooring: due to its strong construction, SPC vinyl parquet can be installed directly over old ceramic tiles without removing them first.
7. No need to worry that it is a material containing chemicals that could be harmful to health: modern quality vinyl parquets do not contain phthalates or other toxic volatile compounds, so they are safe in living spaces. Quality vinyl parquets can also be recommended for asthma and allergy sufferers.
LVT and SPC vinyl parquet
LVT vinyl parquet, which Quick-Step now produces only as glued, is only 2.5 mm thick flooring. What makes the installation of glued vinyl parquet somewhat more complex is the fact that it is important to ensure a quality and smooth, finely leveled substrate. Otherwise, unevenness may show through the flooring. Glued LVT is excellent for covering large public or domestic areas, since expansion joints do not need to be left at the transition points between different rooms, and it is easy to connect rooms or areas laid with patterns in different directions. This achieves a more uniform appearance of the entire floor. LVT is also water-, wear-, and scratch-resistant like SPC. If a larger type of damage does occur and the LVT parquet surface suffers permanent damage, it is possible to easily remove the damaged glued LVT board from the floor and replace it with a new one.
SPC vinyl parquet is a composite material made from a mixture of stone and polymers. Compared to LVT parquet, SPC parquet has a noticeably more rigid and stable construction. The rigidity of SPC parquet allows it to be installed even over old flooring, and the substrate does not require removal of the previous coating, for example in the case of ceramic tiles or other substrates that are glued to their surface, rigid flooring that does not sag/deform when walked on. SPC vinyl parquet is suitable for domestic conditions with floating installation for large areas without inter-room deformation joints, and for areas up to 400 m² (20×20 m). Another advantage over floating LVT is the fact that thanks to its stability, the parquet will not come apart at the joints even if the floor temperature rises above 27 degrees. Thus, SPC parquet is suitable for use in rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows where the sun heats the floor surface intensively.
Laminate parquet
Laminate parquet is generally considered an affordable alternative to solid wood parquet, as its cost per square meter can be surprisingly low. At the same time, the quality of laminate parquets is also highly variable. Thus, it can happen that the initial savings bring significant additional investment within a few years. The main reason – cheaper laminate parquet is often moisture-sensitive and when exposed to water, its edges and surface swell up and corners break. Often, the cheaper end laminate parquet is also thinner (6-7 mm), and its joints are especially sensitive to substrate unevenness, and in combination with cheap end underlayer with low load-bearing capacity (for example, parquet foams), the parquet's click joints can break due to the underlayer sagging under pressure.
If you turn your attention to higher quality solutions, the special appeal of laminate parquet comes to light. Its texture and color selection is diverse, and the parquet is easy to match even the most special style or demanding taste. Therefore, with laminate parquet, the key word is not an ultra-affordable price, but a good and balanced price-to-quality ratio.
Among laminate parquet manufacturers, Quick-Step is at the forefront, standing out for innovation and product development. Quick-Step's laminate parquet offers up to 10x higher scratch resistance thanks to ScratchGuard treatment, and its water-repellent HydroSeal surface treatment makes the parquet moisture-resistant. Water does not get between the joints and the parquet edges do not swell up. Laminate parquet is also easy to install. The Uniclic® system makes it possible for anyone to do it without special skills.
EGGER's laminate parquet offers the largest and most authentic style selection – whether you prefer wood or stone imitation. EGGER laminates are of high quality, and laminates with Aqua+ treatment can be used in moist rooms (bathroom, kitchen, entryway). However, it is still not suitable for use on shower surfaces. The click system makes parquet installation extremely easy and even over large areas.
Contacts:
Phone: +372 53942398
