Kitchen Flooring

Tips for Choosing Kitchen Flooring

Like any flooring in interior design, the choice is huge for kitchen flooring. Wading through the options can be mind boggling, so if you keep in mind a few important factors when selecting kitchen flooring then it will help with the process. Firstly, longevity, how long do you expect the flooring to last? Is it a short term fix, or a long term investment. This will narrow down your choices as cost will come into consideration here. A quick fix laying of inexpensive vinyl compared to installing solid stone flooring at a huge cost. Obviously the vinyl will work well for a few years and the inital oitlay is small, compared to the large outlay of purchasing and laying solid stone product that will last almost forever.

Impervious Surface

As the kitchen can be prone to spills and requires regular cleaning, an impervious surface is imperitive. This means that you can instantly rule out all other flooring finishes like carpet and quite a few timber laminate finishes unless they are able to be sealed well.

Budget

Budget we touched on earlier. It is most important to set a figure for your flooring, as the cost of kitchen cabinetry and appliances quickly add up and you want to ensure you have left enough money in your budget to match the flooring quality to the quality of your cabinetry or joinery.

Overall Design Concept

This basically means how will your kitchen flooring selection fit within the current flooring in your home. It is important that your color scheme and finishes flow within your home.

Colors and Textures

Keep in mind what i mentioned earlier about cleaning. I know a white ceramic tile floor looks fabulous with your white cabinetry, but do you want to be seeing every little spec that lands on the floor, every footprint? It will drive you crazy, unless you enjoy cleaning floors. The same happens with a very dark flooring, and I can spek from the experience of having a black kitchen floor. Never agin. It provided a wonderful contrast to our cabinetry but I nearly went insane with the cats footprints and the kids spills. You dont have to completely rule out choosing a light or dark flooring for the kitchen, you can use these extremes if you add some texture or subtle pattern to the finish. this will break the solid mass of one color and provide some relief. Texture is something you do need to be careful with, a slight texture is fine but a large textured flooring makes it difficult to clean, as it tends to trap things when you are sweeping up.

Kitchen Flooring Examples

So armed with these few things to think about you can then look at flooring finishes for purely the aesthetic value. Learn more about the products you can use on your kitchen floor.

Ceramic Tiles brick paviours, quarry tiles and ceramic tiles.

Semi Hard Flooring Products Properties of Linoleum, rubber, cork and flexible vinyl.

Stone Flooring includes slate, limestone and sandstone, granite, marble, quartzite and mosaic.

Timber Flooring

Color Consultant course