One of the first interior design features you notice when walking through the front door is the flooring you step onto. Is the flooring a heavily worn hardwood? Is it a stained carpet? Maybe some chipped tiles? Nothing is as welcoming as walking onto a beautiful floor. The possibilities are virtually endless, with a variety of materials to choose from, as well as styles and designs to fit any taste. Hard floors include the most diverse, versatile, and sought-after flooring materials available, ranging from clay and ceramic tile flooring to a variety of stone and engineered hardwood, or even composite tiles made from crushed stone.
A Diverse Range of Hard Flooring
When it comes to interior design flooring, you generally have four materials to select from: Tile (clay, or ceramic), solid hardwood (many species of wood), stone (marble, granite, slate), and engineered flooring such as composite (usually tiles made from a mixture of crushed stone bonded in a resin) and hardwood (laminated layers of wood over a core with a solid hardwood laminate). Tiles may consist of single squares in a variety of shapes and sizes, random or designed patterns, and even patterns that repeat. For an intricate look, there are pre-assembled patterns of tile glued to a mesh substrate, so you can get that intricate patterned look without all of the work. From ceramic or stone to engineered composites, interior design flooring provides a multitude of different options, patterns, and colors to choose from.
Years of Installation Experience
One of the key factors to having a long lasting and beautiful floor is the knowledge and experience of your flooring contractor. A quality flooring project starts with choosing the flooring material and a flooring design that fits your tastes. You also need an installer that knows just about everything there is to know about hard flooring. Solid wood and engineered hardwood installation is fairly simple, as it’s just a matter of setting floor boards in place, securing them with floor tacks or an adhesive, and moving on to the next board.
Tile is another story that begins with tearing out any existing flooring (as necessary) and making sure you have a suitable subfloor. By tapping into years of experience, your installer will dry set the flooring in the pattern of your choice, and proceed to set each tile in a bed of adhesive, carefully placing spacers between each tile (to maintain uniformity), before filling joints between the tiles with a mortar. Excess mortar is wiped from the tiles and the joints are wiped or tooled until they are smooth, and precision-cut corners and end tiles are set in place to finish the installation. To learn more about the tiling process by visiting wlsonscustomflooring.com. You can also connect them on Facebook for more updates.
