Welcome to the New World of Resilient Floors

Lisbeth Calandrino, Associate Publisher, Fabulous Floors Magazine and Flooring Industry Educator & Trainer O ne thing the pandemic has taught us: cleanliness is more important than ever! This will likely continue to be so for a long, long time. Thank goodness for Beautifully Responsible™ resilient floors. With so many of us working from home, our highways may be getting less traffic –– but not our floors!

These days, our homes are doing double and even triple duty. For example, a bedroom might be used for a classroom or office in the morning and for sleeping at night. The more traffic our floors are getting, the more time it’s taking to keep up with the dirt and germs. Now is an excellent time to consider changing your floors, and resilient options are your absolute best choice.

Another issue when it comes to cleaning is what types of products are we using? Since we are spending so much time in our homes, air quality has become more important. Today we are more conscious of our floors because we are “living” on them. Since we spend 90% of our time indoors, the air quality has taken on new meaning. That’s why you need to choose the right flooring — flooring that has been endorsed by a third-party agency that tests indoor air quality. That’s resilient flooring.

Cleanliness and hygiene are certainly not new to homeowners with pets and children. Mothers are continually wiping their hands and asking children not to eat things off the floor. With more home traffic, floor cleaning has become a daily chore. Focusing on cleaning high-traffic areas can help prevent the spread of dirt, dust, and germs throughout the rest of the house.

Surfaces without germs have become very important, too. So the key is to keep everything clean, especially the floors. This is also concerning if you shop for groceries or items at the mall and are afraid of bringing germs back into the house. Not only are we walking on our floors, but we’re likely sitting on them, too.

When it comes to cleanliness and hygiene, nothing takes a more significant beating than our floors, and nothing is more hygienic and easier to clean than a resilient product. Resilient flooring has a “give” to it, making it comfortable underfoot and will spring back to shape after it’s walked on.

The Resilient Floor Covering Institute, the trade association representing resilient flooring, has developed a campaign called Beautifully Responsible™ . The RFCI is an organization for all resilient flooring products, including rigid core, flexible luxury vinyl tile, vinyl composition tile, vinyl sheet flooring, rubber, and cork flooring. The idea was to make sure resilient floors are considered ‘eco-friendly’ (not harmful to the environment) and with beautiful styles that fit any home. Also important is to have products that align with our concerns about indoor air quality. All of these floors share a commonality of comfort underfoot as well as easy clean-ability.

To meet our needs, the campaign has been divided into three categories: Mindful Manufacturing™ , Living Well™, and Made for Life™ .

Since we are spending more time in our home, we have become more conscious of the products in our house, what they are made of, and how they affect our lives. Mindful Manufacturing™ means just that. Manufacturers are taking responsibility for tracking products that answer consumers’ concerns and protecting our planet’s needs. In addition, mindful Manufacturing™ is concerned with protecting the planet and the end-of-life of these products.

Poor indoor air quality can give us breathing problems and headaches; this results from chemicals called VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), dust, and allergens. Through Living Well™, products are tested and approved by third-party laboratories. Thanks to FloorScore® and the ASSURE CERTIFIED™ program, these products promote indoor air quality due to the reduced VOC emissions.

Made for Life™ relates to durable floors that will be long-lasting, with advanced scratch and stain resistance. Resilient floors have a lifespan of at least 20 years or longer if cared for properly. ■

Tarkett’s FiberFloor luxury sheet vinyl Lifetime Collection American Chestnut in the color Saddle