Many of us have chilly basements or rooms that experience a lot of heat loss through the floor. This is especially the case in older homes with crawlspaces or even those who live in mobile homes. This is often why cork flooring can be a sensible choice for any of these scenarios.

Cork flooring has a lot of benefits, but perhaps what most notice, at least when compared to other floors, that cork floors feel warmer to the touch than hardwood floors, laminate floors, tile floors and even vinyl floors.  Plus, cork is just a little softer feeling underfoot.

The reason that it feels warmer is because of the air trapped inside. This more porous flooring material traps more air and helps act as a barrier for heat loss and even cooling loss in the warmer season.

If you think about house insulation, it’s mostly air. Whether it’s the pink fiberglass you’re associated to seeing to foam insulation and even those made from bubble wrap, the one quality they all have is that they’re loaded with air. And if you’re installing a floor over a cold area, cork flooring can help substantially.

As it’s getting colder, this may be a greater concern. And if you’re shopping for new floors and the area you’re installing your new floor has inferior insulation, cork flooring can help insulate a room and will help limit heat loss in a home.

Also, many cork floors are made using a wear layer of cork attached to an HDF core, usually made from recycled materials. On the underside is a layer of cork underlayment that adds additional impact resistance. Ultimately what you have is two layers of one of the eco-friendliest natural flooring materials sandwiching a core made of 100% recycled materials. All of this combines to give you better thermal insulation and acoustics.

The same properties that make cork floors great insulators is also what makes them great acoustical barriers. They won’t only help a room retain heat, but they’ll also help with the annoying echoes that ping from room to room. This is especially true for rooms with high ceilings where echoes are more prominent and a larger issue. Cork flooring can reduce the noise associated with these areas.

When at one time cork floors were offered in largely natural cork looks and were mostly used in glue down floor installations, many of today’s cork floors are click cork floors. They are primarily used in floating floor installations and can be installed over most types of subfloors. Many choose cork for their basements to warm a naturally chilly room, while others install cork flooring in a bedroom to make that first step in the morning a warmer, more comfortable one.

Cork flooring addresses many issues that bother us about our current floors, from the way they feel, to the way they sound and even how they perform. And now that they’re available in several types of looks, we’re no longer limited to a natural cork or even stained cork look. Many cork floors now look more like other floors, from cork flooring that looks like hardwood to cork that has a bamboo floor feel.

The flooring consumer now has a lot more choices and can find the perfect cork floor that adds comfort, function, style and performance to any space.

The fact is that the flooring industry has changed a lot in the last twenty years. It seems there was a flooring store on every corner, but today they are harder to find.

There are a lot of reasons for this, from the housing market crash to the home centers making a concerted effort to grow the flooring side of their businesses. However, they weren’t necessarily offering the best prices on flooring.

In 1996, Pergo would introduce laminate flooring to the U.S. market and all of the sudden, more consumers were willing to buy the material and perform a diy floor installation. It was now much easier to do, and as time went on, a click laminate would be offered that required no glue. The boards connected at an angle then snapped down into place over a flooring underlayment. No nails, no adhesives, and as you can imagine, this made installation possible for most anyone.

Because of these new easy to install floors, this paved the way for internet flooring retailers to offer diy floors at a significant discount. The advantage was their not having the massive overhead associated with a retail location. The customer had to pay shipping costs, but the savings were still substantial.

The next several years would bring about even more changes with the flooring industry and the types of floors available. Not only were there more options, but you could now get almost every type of floor with a click locking system. Bamboo flooring, cork flooring, hardwood flooring and even vinyl flooring could now be purchased and easily installed by the customer.

Even if the consumer wasn’t performing a diy flooring installation, the floors were still easy enough to install where the customer could have a handyman or someone with little experience do the work and still get a professional looking installation without having to look for a professional flooring installer.

All this would eventually lead to the internet flooring retailer becoming a major force to be reckoned with. Like everything else, consumers were finding that shopping on the internet for flooring was proving to be a viable way to get big discounts. Floor buyers were saving hundreds, even thousands of dollars on new flooring for their homes.

Today, the concept has more than caught-on, as almost everyone is at least researching the internet before making a decision. Those who don’t might not care and would just prefer to have everyone do everything for them and are willing to pay the additional cost to just have it handled. But those willing to take an extra step or two could get big discounts on flooring.

A disadvantage of cork is that it will gouge easier than a traditional floor, though not easily. You’ll just want to take extra care when moving around large furniture and appliances. Other than that, cork floors are easy to clean and provide enormous benefits.

Some advantages of cork floors are that they feel warmer to the touch and even act as an insulator. They also absorb sound very well and when combined with cork underlayment, you create a sound barrier unrivaled by any other type of flooring. This might be important if you’re installing a floor directly over a room that gets a lot of use or any room that tends to echo.

When first introduced, cork flooring was available in natural looks and typically meant for glue-down floor installations. The dramatic look was almost shocking and many loved it. Others didn’t, and that’s why there is now an entirely new generation of these types of floors that are stylish and durable.

Many love the natural swirl pattern of cork, others prefer a smaller granule look, and some like to see it all. But if its boldness isn’t your particular cup of tea, there are now cork floors that look similar to hardwood flooring. Rich colors, beveled edges, and easy to install are just some of their impressive qualities.

Why many choose cork in the first place is because how environmentally friendly a material it is. The cork tree isn’t chopped down or removed, every so often the bark is removed to create cork floors and a variety of other products. We’ve been using it for centuries, but technology has reached a place where we can take advantages of its benefits far more than we ever have.

A great example is the click locking systems now offered on these floors. Many you’ll find are a cork wear layer attached to an HDF core.  An additional layer of cork underlayment is attached to the underside, giving you two layers of cork.  Floors like these provide excellent impact resistance and comfort in addition to their warm and soft feel.

Many of these floors are now available with a click locking system that secures the boards together. They can be used in floating floor installations over most types of subfloors, and because no glue is required, almost anyone can install a click cork floor.  If you’re a do-it-yourselfer planning to install your own flooring, take a look at the new looks in cork before you make your final decision.

The eco-friendly flooring aspect is one thing, but the real benefits provided by cork are just as attractive. Cork is hypoallergenic, natural and improves your quality of life by adding warmth and deadening the sounds that can drive you crazy sometimes. It’s easy to care for, and provided you practice a little care when doing certain things, you’ll be happy for a very long time.

So rather than give a complete history hear are some of the highlights:

1) Cork is resilient – that means it is inherently tough.

2) Cork is hypoallergenic – that means it is good for people with allergies.

3) Cork is unique visually – that means you will either hate it or love it.

4) Cork is very dent resistent – although denting is something that most cork can recover from due to it’s natural structure it can gouge easier than other floors

Recently there a new e-commerce introduction from www.homeimporters.com caught this blogger’s attention by also adding an important key additional feature:

5) Cork is very affordable – prices vary by pattern – but the prices that are available on Cork Flooring at www.corkimporters.com are very compelling.

All of those reasons together makes cork flooring a great choice for kitchens, family rooms, offices and more. The only caveat on cork is that if your finish starts to wear then you should recoat the floor with a hardwood flooring finish to insure a long life span. The other note is that bright direct sunlight can cause cork to fade which is not a huge issue, but you should at least be aware of it.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Architects and designers would specify this type of flooring in the most demanding commercial flooring environments like museums or other high traffic areas and then order a stain and finish to be applied to the surface of the cork flooring just like a hardwood floor.

Most often the cork that was used was the small random sized cork granules and therefore could be refinished over the years as well. This type of classic cork flooring is making a comeback even today in the early 21^st Century!

Since the recent turn of the century however, the classic look has taken a back seat to the newer styled cork which offers numerous décor types and stain color and most often using an HDF click core board to make the installation of cork flooring something that a DIY (do-it-yourself) flooring shopper can handle.

The newer patterns have a much more broad range of granule sizes and shapes. The basic cork flooring cost equation is that cork flooring with larger granule sizes, which are much harder to get, cost more than the small easier to find cork board style granules. Cork itself is the bark of the cork oak tree and getting large enough bark to create large granules is very difficult and logically carries a higher cost of production. One fact that a lot of people miss is that cork of this type uses a thin veneer of the pattern on top of the base cork material which has the smaller granules which makes it impossible to refinish, however, that is not a downside if you maintain your flooring properly. In fact you can add coats of finish to a cork floor (often referred to as a recoat) just like a hardwood floor to create a long term floor.

Although people often wonder why the cost of one cork is $1.99 and why another pattern is $8.99 it often related to the granule size, width and overall quality of the floor. In traditional retail stores cork ranges from about $4-$12 per square foot. Online shoppers that are smart can often find cork at 50%-70% below those ranges, but as always make sure you are being from someone you trust because not all cork flooring is made equally.

This cork tree has recently been harvested to product wine corks and cork flooring

This cork tree us being harvested for wine corks and cork flooring without cutting it down. The bark is removed about every 9 years and the trees last for 150-200 years. That is green flooring!

This is the bark of cork flooring that is being taking to a cork factory. (today trucks are used, but in old times hand carts were used)

The wine stoppers have been punched from this cork oak bark. Now the remainder of the bark will be constructed into different post industrial usages including Cork Flooring. Cork Flooring is LEEDS capable because it is 90% post industrial waste.

This cork flooring has been cut and will be sliced to create a surface veneer for the top of premium grade cork flooring.

Not only is cork a very earth friendly floor because it is 100% recycled it is also very soft under your feet and can be a very durable floor when used in the proper way.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Bamboo Flooring new site limited to 1 sku of horizontal carbonized bamboo only.