Equipping the kitchen and making repairs in it, each owner asks about the material for the floor. What is the first thing you need to pay attention to? Choosing a material, one should take into account its hygienic properties, wear resistance and moisture resistance, external beauty and practicality. In addition, the inclusion of flooring in the overall style and design of the kitchen is also important. Thus, the most suitable materials on the construction markets can be called tile (it is usually given priority), porcelain stoneware, linoleum or PVC tile, moisture-resistant laminate and self-leveling floors. As regards solid wood, parquet and cork, these materials, in spite of their external beauty and durability, are less suitable for the kitchen, as they are difficult to maintain and poorly adapted to high humidity.
Tiled floor and porcelain stoneware
These versatile materials have recently been most often used to cover the kitchen floor. Their advantages are obvious here. Firstly, they are environmentally friendly, very durable, easy to clean and not afraid of household chemicals. A variety of colors and textures allows you to use tiles in any style of interior: a strict classic, delicate romantic or daring modern, and also gives room for design imagination and vivid experiments with the help of various color combinations and decor.
The tile for the kitchen floor is selected taking into account the requirements for its durability and safety, so experts recommend buying tiles of the fourth strength class and PEI 3/1500 standard, as well as with anti-slip coating.
What are the disadvantages of this gender? It is very hard, so cups, plates and glasses that have fallen on the tile, scatter into many small fragments. It’s also cold, but there is a way out. The warm floor in the kitchen will make the room even more cozy and comfortable. Modern systems of underfloor heating, such as infrared, are mounted quickly and without serious financial costs. And walking on this floor, especially barefoot, is a pleasure.
Floor in the kitchen from linoleum
Here is another versatile material that has been used for years to cover floors. He is constantly improving, becoming better, more environmentally friendly and more beautiful. Modern types of linoleum surprise with a variety of colors, style decisions and bright design. In addition, it is made from environmentally friendly materials with the addition of natural components, impregnated with antistatic and anti-combustible compounds. In short, linoleum coating is durable, inexpensive, modern and very practical. However, the fact that this material is one of the cheapest is, on the one hand, its advantage, and on the other, a disadvantage. No matter how beautiful it is, the use of linoleum in the interior greatly reduces the cost of the appearance of the room, even if the cover design imitates expensive parquet, mosaic or natural stone.
Self-leveling floor in the kitchen
This type of coating has become fashionable relatively recently. It consists of a special polymer material, which is diluted with water and poured onto the floor. The result is a very even and smooth coating with high performance. Bulk floors are waterproof, resistant to abrasion and household chemicals, environmentally friendly. Their color scheme can be very different: bright monophonic, glossy or matte, with decorative splashes, rainbow stains, etc. A novelty in the production of bulk floors was a coating with the effect of three-dimensional volumetric image. They make it with the help of a photo print, which is laid on the floor, and poured on top with a thick layer of a special transparent lacquer composition, strong and durable. Disadvantages of a bulk floor? First of all, the high cost and complexity of installation.
The kitchen is a multifunctional room. As a rule, here they not only prepare food, but also gather with the whole family, and also receive guests. Often they try to divide the kitchen into functional zones: to distinguish the dining room and kitchen compartment. This division can additionally be emphasized not only with lightweight partitions, different color schemes of the walls, but also with the floor finish. The combined floor in the kitchen is made up of various materials. For example, a laminate or a massive board is placed in the dining area , and tiles or linoleum are placed in the cooking area, making joints with special decorative profiles.