Cork floors: a selection of ideas for decorating the kitchen, bathroom and hallway
The modern flooring market offers a huge amount of materials - this is a fact. But among this diversity there are clear leaders. Cork flooring is an extremely popular modern flooring material that is worthy of competing with the “king” of flooring - parquet. Look at glossy magazines: cork floors can often be found in the projects of leading interior designers, because rooms with such floors are magnificent. But let's look at where such a surface would be appropriate in our home, and where it is better to abandon it. Or maybe cork floors is a universal option?
Advantages of cork flooring
Cork coating is made from environmentally friendly raw materials - cork oak bark, which is extracted on plantations that are never artificially irrigated and are not processed with chemicals. Here are the benefits of cork flooring compared to other flooring:
- Durability;
- Strength;
- Reliability;
- Ease;
- Softness;
- Antistatic;
- Elasticity;
- Chemical inertness;
- Fire resistance;
- Resistance to corrosion;
- Hypoallergenicity;
- Excellent thermal and sound insulating material;
- There is no trace of heavy furniture;
- Accessibility and speed of installation, and if necessary, the cork floating floor can be transferred to another room without any problems;
- Very undemanding to care - you just need to periodically perform wet cleaning;
- The total operating costs are several times less compared to natural parquet or laminate.
By the way: manufacturers give a warranty period of 10 when using cork flooring in public places and 30 years in residential premises.
Types of cork floors
Cork flooring comes in two forms:
- Glueless.
- Glue.
Cork glueless floors are very often called floating and in terms of structure they resemble a parquet board.
Their production, like a laminate, is based on an HDF-plate, on top of which there is a layer of cork with a thickness of at least 3 mm. The top surface of the veneer is varnished.
Cork adhesive floors look like a slice of cork oak and are delivered to the consumer in the form of sheets of a rectangular shape up to 6 mm thick. The front surface can be made in three variations:
- completely coated with a layer of varnish;
- with pre-varnishing - after laying, the processed material is additionally covered with 2-3 layers of varnish;
- coated with wear resistant vinyl.
In addition, there is such a thing as “cork floor tiles”. In this form, the cork is glued not only to the floor, but also to the ceiling and wall surfaces. If we talk about floors, then the technique of laying cork tiles is similar to laying classic ceramic tiles.
Interesting: natural cork is made in one country in the world - Portugal.
In which parts of the apartment can you lay a cork floor?
In principle, there can be no restrictions, although some features of the use of flooring of this kind still exist.
In the kitchen
Customer reviews say that making a kitchen floor from a cork is quite practical.If all the installation work is done correctly, that is, varnish in several layers is applied on top, then there are no problems with the operation of such a floor in the kitchen. Even in the event of a spill, the protection holds it for 24 hours.
Although, of course, if possible, then the working area of the kitchen is best done with tiles, and then put cork. The uniquely combined floor in the kitchen is beautiful and functional.
In bathroom
Cork floors in the bathroom? Why not? With proper operation, they will serve for a long time and reliably. In addition, the cork does not absorb foreign odors. And this material is also a favorite tool of interior designers: there are practically no restrictions in the structure, shape of the picture and color solutions.
In the hall
The entrance hall is a business card of any home, and even if it does not differ in excess of square meters, it should still have a presentable appearance. It turns out that you can make it so very simple - by laying a cork flooring. Due to the fact that cork is a natural material, it has internal heat. And this nuance is very important for the entrance hall.
In custody
If you liked cork material as a floor covering, but you doubt its practicality - cast aside doubts. Believe me, you will not regret it.
Igor
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