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Flooring

<<Back to December 2021 PRO News
​Flooring Basics Part 1: Introducing Clients to the Options

These days homeowners buy flooring based mostly on appearance, but there’s more to choosing wisely than just looks. It’s to your advantage to help clients make educated flooring choices because happy clients are your best sales team for future work through word of mouth. Current flooring trends include lighter colours, greater visual variety, low gloss, and high durability. Wider widths of flooring are also gaining in popularity, with an emphasis on one flooring style throughout the house. Within these broad styling trends, there are things you need to explain to clients to ensure they’re happy. A little time spent now yields big gains later. 

As you prepare to educate clients on flooring, build yourself a small kit of flooring samples. You’ll inspire a lot more confidence if you can show homeowners larger samples of the options you’re talking about.

Prefinished Solid Wood

This is making a come-back, especially among consumers who want to move away from laminate and vinyl. Oak remains a popular choice, but with brushed or textured finishes. Rustic colour variations and visual character mean that lower grade wood flooring is appreciated these days, too. Durability varies with the type and brand of solid wood flooring, but you should explain that no solid wood flooring can match the durability of high-end laminate or vinyl. 
 
Bistro Maple Solid
 

Engineered Hardwood

This is the only responsible option for clients who want some kind of solid wood look in areas with potential high humidity conditions, such as a basement. Unlike solid wood, engineered wood can typically be installed over radiant infloor heating. Besides being more physically stable, engineered hardwood flooring is more environmentally responsible because the visible layer of high-end hardwood is relatively thin, extending the amount of flooring that can be made from a given log.

Tongue and groove engineered hardwood is in higher demand than click styles right now, and that’s an advantage for you. Installing tongue and groove using 1/4” staples driven at an angle through the base of the tongue is an excellent way to create a stable floor over slightly uneven subfloors. 

Be sure to explain how engineered flooring is not as tough as laminate or vinyl, and it comes in widely varying grades. Explain how the high-end options have a visible top hardwood layer that’s thick enough to be sanded and refinished a couple of times.  Cheaper engineered flooring cannot be refinished because the visible wood layer is too thin. 
Goodfellow Original Engineered Hardwood - Solid Hardwood
Fiji Engineered Hardwood

Laminates

​Introduced to Canada in 1992, laminates are now considered a tried, tested and true product delivering lots of durability and ease of installation. Laminates are the most affordable click flooring option and the 12 mm thickness is currently the most popular with consumers and contractors.

Early laminates were susceptible to being ruined by exposure to water, but that’s improved quite a bit. These days water resistant laminates with an extra-tight click system can survive two or three days of being totally submerged with no damage.

Laminates are unique in that there is an industry-wide durability scale for different types of laminate. The abrasive class rating (AC) offers a range of choices depending on the budget and application: AC3 - standard home use; AC4 home or light commercial; AC5 heavy-duty commercial. Be sure to explain these ratings and have examples to show your clients.
Montebello Laminate Flooring
Atlantique Laminate Flooring

Vinyl

This is currently the #1 choice in flooring for homes and cottages. Luxury vinyl tile (LVT) and luxury vinyl plank (LVP) are the two common shapes that vinyl flooring comes in. The main advantages of this option include very durable and abrasion resistant performance and authentic wood grain and tile patterns. Physical flexibility is another big advantage of LVT and especially LVP. Whereas laminates require a very flat subfloor (typically no more than 1/4” of deviation from flat over a 10-foot radius) vinyl products easily follow undulations in the subfloor that would be unacceptable with laminates.

Vinyl flooring ranges in thickness from 3.2mm to 8mm and comes in many colours, textures and styles. It can sometimes be installed over existing finished flooring and offers exceptional joint strength, plus high resistance to damage from sunlight, temperature swings and indentation damage.

Stone Plastic Composite (SPC) refers to a class of rigid vinyl flooring with a stone and polymer core. This boosts the strength and firmness of SPC compared with other types of vinyl, but there’s a limitation. SPC flooring requires a subfloor that’s at least as flat as laminates, with no more than 3/16” of deviation from flat over a 10-foot radius or 1/32” of deviation over a 12 inch area.
 
Sapphire SPC Flooring
 

Loose Lay/Dry Back

This unique type of vinyl flooring is the newest kind around so your clients may never have heard of it. As the name suggests, loose lay simply sits on the floor with no interlocking between neighbouring pieces. Loose lay is flexible and generally quite thin. It’s the easiest flooring to install and can usually go down over existing finished flooring. Dry back flooring is similar to loose lay, but it’s made to be glued down. This stuff is tough enough for commercial/industrial applications.

Flooring choice is one of the most important steps to a great flooring job, and helping your clients choose wisely is a key part of your work as a contractor. Is your client having trouble deciding? Suggest they buy just one box of the flooring they think they might like, then put it down and live with it for a while as a test. There’s nothing quite like seeing how a floor looks, feels and hides dirt to help your client make a confident choice.
 
Rocky Mountain Vinyl - Loose Lay Flooring
 

Inspiration is always handy

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