Flooring ‘N Tiles

Natural marble light floor tiles have all those charateristics we look for in a marble product: a veiny, multicolored look, speckled with granite-like inbedded splashes of color and a semi-tranluscent sheen. Marble has been used for centuries as a flooring product for the very most elegant places. The glamor and sheer beauty of marble override some of its detriments and offer a strikingly gorgeous flooring solution that pleases absolutely everyone with its breathtaking charm.

However, as mentioned marble has a detriment or two. It is not nearly as hard a material as Travertine, for example, and many other natural stone flooring tiles. There is a reason outside of it’s gorgeous color that is has served well as a scupltor’s medium: it very simply cuts easier than many other materials. Marble also has issues with standing water and anything possessing a level of acidity which often weakens it. It is pourous enough to collect the acidic waters and chemicals and certainly soft enough to break down over time.

Nevertheless, marble remains the “summa cum laude” of flooring beauty, simply because of its sheer beauty. And it does indeed have that. Tightly-veined, impressively colored, seemingly semi-transparent, marble can be an absolutely breath-taking material to use on flooring in a residence where constant traffic is less than in a commerical application and where the upkeep on it can be safely assumed. Marble light floor tiles are very easy to install as well, something I certainly care about. The materials on the slick, clear surface wipe up perfectly and owing to the expense, they typically get cut to exactly the specificiations and installer wants most. By residential, not commerical standards, marble holds up as well as any flooring tile.

Every now and again, I like to take a break from reviewing tiles and looking into styles, or rather different types of flooring.

In contrast to the neutral tiles discussed in the previous post, let’s talk about colorful tiles today.

Colorful floor tile can make an extreme difference in a home. Naturally, the term “colorful” can mean any number of things, so let us go ahead and remove the barriers to our biases and consider them all. Wild and bizarrely beautiful things are going on in the glass, metal and ceramic world: intense colors, veined glazes rife with outstanding and amazingly bright color, swirls and hand-painted objects of art. There truly seems to be no limit.

High technology has provided tiles and tilings with a entirely new set of images and colorful possibilities as a functioning piece of beautiful and other-worldly artwork. Imagine walls and floors comprised of segmented pictures of creek bed rocks or forest floor images. The photographic end of this creative twist alone is enough to make a head spin.

Then you arrive at even weirder chemical shapes and oxidized configurations determined by crystal formations and dollops of original artistic color. Truly, all limits are lifted. It is left to the imagination from this point on because there are nearly no limits left.

In response to a reader’s email -

Laminate flooring is a term dealing with a flooring product sent and installed in pieces, made to lock together with edges which snap in place. First developed in 1977 by Pergo, a Swedish company and since often referred to in a generalized way as “Pergo”, laminate flooring has rapidly developed as a sensible flooring product which is far more durable than standard wood flooring and which is also easy enough to install that a homeowner himself can do so.

Laminate flooring has the virtue of being stronger owing to the mix of natural and inorganic compositional material, glued together with a highly-adherent glue.  The density and make up of these materials insures a most durable product.

It also comes in an amazingly wide variety of finishes, typically in a wood-like finish but often resembling a tile or natural stone finish as well. In the wood-like finishes, modern technology can allow the strips of laminate to resemble almost any wood, giving a deep Oak or Cherry-like finish, complete with grains and apparent “knots”,  In the tile-like finished, almost any stone can be replicated, including some marble and some slate finishes. While it could be argued that laminate flooring is such a new technology that it is still in its infancy, the sheer amount of attention paid to the field has delivered some astoundingly interesting results, both in the appearance and in the durability of this deceptively simple product.

Ideal for high traffic walkways and surfaces, laminate flooring was embraced by many architects and designers as a completely satisfactory solution to both the expense and durability issues involving flooring finishes.  It therefore picked up steam as a flooring alternative and resulted in a fast-paced research and development search for yet more solutions.

I love home decor and DIY jobs. I’ve been around professionals all my life and learned from the best. With the internet, I am still learning, finding out about new techniques and materials. This blog is intended for everything flooring and tiles related, and I intend to write about stuff that I read about, as well as share my own tips and advice.