Kitchen Design Software

Choosing Floors for Your Kitchen Design

Hardwood Kitchen Flooring

Oak and maple are common choices for wood kitchen flooring; pine is often used to give a worn effect. The wood is typically installed prior to the cabinets and laid in:

• planks
• narrow strips
• patterned parquet squares

A floor finished on-site with penetrating oil and wax gives you a classic look and an even surface. However, it will need to be waxed annually. This type of treatment is more appropriate for the drawing room than a high-traffic, high-spill zone like the kitchen.

Ceramic Tile Kitchen Flooring

• Ceramic tiles are made from pressed clays covered with a glaze of metallic oxides and ceramic stains or finished with a matte surface.
• Porcelain mosaic tiles are baked at a higher temperature, which makes them thicker. Their color also goes through the tile, rather than only covering the surface.
• Quarry tile is an unglazed mix of shale and clays that also has color throughout.

The spaces between the tiles are filled in by grout. An epoxy grout is recommended to help resist stains. It’s usually best to choose a grout that closely matches the color of the tiles.

Laminate flooring resembles hardwood or stone while offering the easy maintenance of vinyl. Some people turn their noses up at the idea of obtaining the look of natural materials from plastic laminate adhered to fiberboard or particleboard. But you may want to consider the product, which has been popular in Europe for decades, if you want the look but not the price tag of real wood.

Most often associated with the kitchen of your grandmother, linoleum has come back in fashion as an environmentally friendly product. Linoleum is often confused with plastic vinyl because they both come in sheet form. But vinyl is made from synthetics and linoleum from natural materials—it’s a felt or canvas coated with linseed oil, cork, and resins. The Latin root of the word linoleum means flax or linen combined with oil. It comes in plain or decorative patterns, including ones that resemble marble.

The most common stones for the kitchen floor are granite, marble, and slate.

You’ve stepped on plenty of vinyl in your lifetime. One of the most common kitchen flooring materials, it’s known as “resilient” because of its ability to bounce back into shape. That’s what gives it a cushiony feel. Vinyl comes in sheet or tile form (which can be easier to install but also more susceptible to water damage because of its seams) and in all kinds of colors and patterns.

When you choose vinyl, you’ll need to decide on a type: standard or inlaid. The key difference between the two is:

• Standard vinyl uses a rotogravure process in which the color and pattern are printed on one sheet layered between a thick, clear upper surface (the wear layer) and a foamy vinyl core.
• In inlaid vinyl, the color and pattern go all the way through the core material. Inlaid vinyl is considered the more dense and durable of the two.

Both types of vinyl have a protective no-wax coating or a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) surface (the same water-resistant resin used on raincoats). Jump around on the floor samples before you decide, as the cushiness will vary depending on the thickness of the core material in inlaid vinyl and of the wear layer in standard vinyl.

If you’d like to place carpeting in your kitchen work area, choose something durable, such as a tight berber made out of a stain-resistant material like olefin.

This mixture of cement, water, and sand or gravel isn’t just for the basement floor anymore. Color can be added to the mix, and it absorbs heat, making it ideal for a radiant heat system.