bathroom Tile and stone flooring

The commonest options for bathroom floors involve stone, vinyl (an environmentally bad option), linoleum and ceramic tile (including porcelain tile). Engineered flooring and l aminate flooring are also alternatives.

Bathroom stone flooring

Stone – or some kinds of stone – can be a good bathroom flooring choice, though rather more expensive.

To avoid moisture problems you should choose an appropriate stone: softer stones are prone to staining, and to scratching and water absorption. Marble and granite are the most common options for bathroom flooring…

Since stone floors tend to be slippery, a naturally textured stone is recommended.

See:

Natural stone tiles
Stone tiles, Moisture, Stains and Maintenance

Sheet and Tile Vinyl flooring

Tile vinyl is a very popular choice for bathroom flooring, due to its price and to easy installation. But though vinyl offers a large set of design options, it isn’t as durable and hasn't the value and solid look of stone and ceramic tile. Besides, vinyl is a very poisonous plastic (at production and disposal level), that should be avoided, for environmental reasons.

Linoleum

Linoleum doesn’t offer the value and look of other bathroom flooring materials, but it is cheap, environmentally-friendly and resistant to spills and water (though not to persistent water and moisture.) Consider linoleum bathroom flooring for an inexpensive and easy to install solution. And also for an environmental, non-toxic and biodegradable alternative…

See: Linoleum flooring

Bathroom Ceramic Tile flooring

Ceramic tile (including porcelain) is probably the best material for bathroom flooring.

Ceramic tile offers a large set of design possibilities (you may choose from an immense set of different designs and patterns), low or moderate prices, low water absorption rates and high-traffic wear-resistant properties (whenever important). Besides, ceramic tile cleans up very well, has a very low maintenance and resists to pools of water.

Just take into account the following features:

- Choose a tile with a low water absorption rate (glazed tiles are virtually waterproof; porcelain tile is also an excellent possibility, though more expensive than other ceramic alternatives);

- To get a larger set of aesthetic options, consider different tile sizes, shapes (octagonal, hexagonal…), color combinations, or different tinted grout.

- To minimize the slippery side of some ceramic tile, chose a textured anti-slip tile. Since smaller tiles are less slippery (because they involve more grout), you can choose smaller ceramic tile sizes…

- Since ceramic tile floors - like stone floors - poses the issue of coldness, consider a convenient rug or, eventually, radiant heating floor (radiant heating and ceramic tiles are an ideal combination).