kitchen flooring

Choosing the right kitchen floor depends on personal tastes, but also on some very practical features...

Criteria

Kitchens are rooms where family and kids stay long and foot traffic is intense, and where the floor is exposed to regular moisture and to stains… In other words: top criteria when choosing kitchen flooring should include ease of cleaning, low-water absorption, and stain and high wear footing resistance.

Ceramic tile is perhaps the best practical choice for kitchen flooring. But you may want to consider other ones: linoleum is a cheap and environmental option; some stones will increase the look and value of your house. And you may also consider laminated and engineered wood, linoleum or even hardwood, for less common solutions…

Linoleum & Kitchen Floors

Linoleum flooring is inexpensive and comes in numerous designs. Linoleum is easy to install, and an easy-to-clean material, requiring minimal maintenance. Besides, it an environmental solution (unlike vinyl, which is environmentally-unfriendly and poisonous): it is made from linseed oil, wood flour, rosin, cork dust, ground limestone… pressed into a jute backing, which make it non-toxic and biodegradable.

Though resistant to wear, spills and water, linoleum is not as ‘solid’ and resistant as a good ceramic or stone tile, and doesn’t offer their value and look.

See: Linoleum flooring

Ceramic tile

Ceramic tile – including porcelain tile - is an excellent kitchen flooring choice, probably the best in terms of performance-price ratio (though some people consider ceramic kitchen flooring too hard and uncomfortable, and too slippery).

Ceramic tile is excellent in terms of durability, and staining, denting or scratching resistance and allows an easy maintenance and a huge set of patterns and designs. Just choose the right ceramic tile: choose a textured ceramic (to prevent the slippery) and a sufficiently hard and glazed tile (to avoid scratches, denting or staining). See: Ceramic Tile.

Wood flooring

Wood isn’t exactly a common option in kitchen flooring, but it can be a good option if you love… wood. Be aware, anyway: water is a cause of wood warping, and kitchens floors aren’t exactly dry places. Large liquid spills can seep under the kitchen wood floor and cause large damages.

You may use some hardwoods (or bamboo) but laminate wood and engineered woods are much better options, due to their much more water resistant properties. Laminate flooring and engineered wood flooring are growing in popularity due to their numerous designs and multitude of colors, and to their properties: they are easy to install (the laminate flooring, namely) and offer basic broom and mop clean up, besides being relatively stain resistant and water resistant.

Anyway, even in the case of engineered woods or laminate woods, you should pay attention to the possibility of large liquid spills, and the damages they will cause...

See, for details:

Bamboo flooring vs. Hardwood
Laminate flooring vs. Hardwood flooring
Engineered flooring vs. Hardwood flooring

Stone Kitchen flooring

Granite, marble and slate floorings are common options, based on appearance and durability criteria. But stone flooring is on average more expensive than other alternatives and deserve some objections: stone can be too hard and, consequently, uncomfortable in terms of daily use, and can also be slippery when wet… See: Natural stone tiles and Stone tiles, Moisture, Stains and Maintenance.