Walls and even ceilings can be updated “cosmetically” at least every year. How to choose the right flooring for an apartment so as not to return to this issue for at least a dozen years? With a huge selection of materials in flooring stores, it’s easy to get confused. Parquet is beautiful, but expensive. Linoleum is said to emit harmful fumes. Tiles - the floor will be cold, and everything on it will shake...
Let's try to understand together the pros and cons of various coatings. After all, outwardly, each type of floor looks beautiful, aesthetically pleasing and attractive in its own way. Therefore, you need to pay attention to other criteria:
susceptibility to mechanical damage (wear resistance);
practicality (maintenance requirements, ease of cleaning);
purpose of the floor (for the kitchen and bathroom - moisture-resistant, for the bedroom - warm, for the living room or hall - spectacular, for the corridor - highly durable, for the nursery - environmentally friendly, etc.);
comfort (warm/cold, coating texture).
So, let's look at the most popular options for materials for arranging floors in an apartment.
Parquet – a classic of the genre
Arranging a classic inlaid parquet floor, choosing high-quality varnish, fitting “plank to plank” is a fairly easy task compared to the mass of requirements for caring for this beautiful, natural, warm, but so whimsical wood!
Pros: it looks impressive and noble, there are many styling methods that allow you to create a real work of art. This flooring is indispensable when creating expensive interiors in historical styles. The very presence of inlaid parquet in a home indicates the respectability and financial well-being of the owner. The floor is warm, pleasant to the touch, makes you want to walk barefoot...
Cons: The wear resistance of the floor depends on the coating. High-quality factory varnish can preserve wood for 5-10 years, but oil or wax will have to be renewed annually. Under constant mechanical load, the top layer quickly loses its spectacular appearance and requires periodic restoration and sanding. It is advisable to maintain the temperature and humidity in the room (the best option is from +18 to +25 degrees). It tolerates moisture extremely poorly. It requires special treatment even during wet cleaning, and if the room is suddenly flooded with water, it will not be possible to “resurrect” the floor.
Laminate is an imitation of parquet. But is it successful?
Laminate is not afraid of women's heels and the claws of pets, however, this applies to materials with a strength factor of 23 and higher. Modern and budget coating, but there is little “natural” in it. Essentially, this is a beautiful laminated piece of paper (at best, a very thin top cut of wood) based on dense fiberboard.
Pros: simple and quick installation using the “floating” method, quite accessible for DIY floor installation. It has many varieties and colors that reliably imitate a wooden floor, while being 4-5 times cheaper. There are also bright colors with original patterns for colorful interiors. Ease of maintenance, resistance to household chemicals, non-flammability and affordable price have made laminate one of the leaders in modern flooring.
Cons: poor moisture resistance and sound insulation. To reduce the “ringing” of the floor and smooth out unevenness, it is necessary to level the surface and arrange the substrate. The joints sometimes separate, forming gaps. In the worst case, fastening joints break due to incorrect substrate and heavy load.
Alternative options: parquet boards are much less demanding to maintain than parquet, more natural than laminate, since they are made of wood. Service life – up to 15 years.
Linoleum - budget price and wide choice
One of the most economical floor covering options. Essentially, it is a multilayer roll made from polymer materials. Although there are also linoleums made using traditional technology, from a linen base, linseed oil, cork, wood flour, and rubber. True, such natural flooring is made by only three manufacturers: Sommer, Forbo, DLW. Everything else is a product of the chemical industry.
Pros: easy to install: spread it, secure it, nail the baseboard on top. Easy to clean, absolutely easy to care for, comes in many colors.
Cons: it looks exactly like linoleum; even the best imitations of a wooden structure cannot compare with that gelaminate. The floor must be leveled before installation, otherwise the slightest humps or depressions will remain during finishing. Rumors about the dangers of linoleum have a right to life: plasticizers are actually used in its production, thanks to which the coating becomes flexible. However, they can have a negative effect only if they are present in large quantities (and checking this, as you yourself understand, is no easier than asking the manufacturer for the exact composition of the material).
Alternative: use linoleum only from branded manufacturers. By the way, you can check the amount of plasticizers yourself: to do this, a piece of the roll should be taken out into the cold. With a minimum of harmful additives, the top protective layer will crack when bent. But if the backing also cracks, the product is of low quality.
Tiles and artificial stone - reliable, beautiful... cold
Few people can afford natural marble or granite floors. But modern porcelain tiles and other types of artificial stone are quite capable of imitating a stone surface.
Pros: excellent moisture resistance, fire safety, ease and ease of cleaning.
Cons: glossy finishes are easily damaged, so it is recommended to choose matte tiles for the floor. But a rough surface has both advantages and disadvantages: it provides a more “natural” look, but makes cleaning difficult, trapping dust and debris in the folds of the relief texture.
Alternative: installing a heated floor will help get rid of the main disadvantage of a stone floor - a cold surface.
Cork floor - warm and cozy
Cork flooring is natural, beautiful and has a pleasant tactile sensation. At the same time, the technology for processing cork, despite new equipment, has remained virtually unchanged over the last hundred years. For the corridor, bathroom and kitchen, an adhesive stopper is recommended; for residential premises - lockable.
Pros: anti-allergenic - cork is recommended for floors in children's rooms and rooms where allergy sufferers live. The material is warm, soft, non-slippery, springs easily underfoot, having a positive effect on the musculoskeletal system. It has excellent sound insulation (cork is even used for finishing recording studios) and antistatic (does not attract dust, dirt can be quickly removed with standard wet cleaning).
Cons: susceptible to deformation: you can’t put a heavy cabinet or an old grandma’s chest of drawers made of natural oak on the cork. At the same time, cork is quite resistant to scratches (for example, from high-heeled shoes). High, like all natural materials, price.
Alternative: special pressure-reducing pads are recommended under the legs of heavy furniture. In addition, if the furniture is moved from time to time, even just a couple of centimeters, the cork is restored, thanks to the “bubble” structure of the material, which compresses under pressure and then expands to its original state.
Self-leveling floors - modern and impressive
This type of coating is increasingly used when finishing floors, especially large areas. You should know that only polyurethane floors are used for apartments, and their “brothers” based on methyl methacrylic and epoxy resins are used in industrial premises.
Pros: durability (manufacturers provide a guarantee of 40 years); good adhesion - they can be laid on almost any base, the floor surface will still be perfectly smooth, without seams or gaps. Self-leveling floors are easy and simple to clean, they are fireproof and are not afraid of moisture.
Cons: standard self-leveling floors have a very modest color range, which is dominated by neutral shades - beige, brown, gray. The price of decorative self-leveling 3D or photo flooring floors is fabulously high (from 7000 rub/m2 and above - depends on the volume of the room: the smaller, the more expensive).
