Luxury Vinyl Tiles Buying Guide - Beautiful Flooring Direct
Luxury Vinyl flooring is a stylish and cost effective flooring solution. With modern day production techniques, we can now create the appearance of real wood grains, and ceramic and stone tiles.
The main features of Luxury Vinyl tiles are:
- Versatile- perfect for all areas of the home especially kitchens and bathrooms where there is moisture.
- Hardwearing- Ideal for areas of heavy use.
- Easy to Clean- excellent for households with pets and children
- Non-allergenic- a good choice for allergy sufferers
- Soft and Warm underfoot- more comfortable to walk on than real stone or ceramic tiles
- Waterproof- above and below
- No waiting-“Click” and “Peel & stick” versions can be taken out of its packaging and laid on your floor right away.
Luxury vinyl tiles also have many benefits
- It is fade resistant
- Stain resistant
- Easily Maintained
- Impact resistant
- Resistant to household chemicals
- Many are Slip resistant
Widths available:
Luxury vinyl tiles and planks are sold in packs, and contain multiple tiles /planks equating to a m2 coverage.
Once you know the area of the room you need to cover, you divide this by the pack quantity to calculate how many packs you need.
Luxury Vinyl styles
Luxury vinyl tiles, are replicas of real woods and stones and are created to mimic the original items, therefore the woods are created in plank formats and the tiles in ceramic tile formats.
Each range may vary in widths, and lengths and but within each range maintain the same height and therefore different colour options can be laid together to create individual designs. Mixing woods and stones is a very contemporary style option.
2 strip and 3 strip designs –perfect for a modern contemporary room.
Full Plank designs- ideal for a more traditionally designed room
Tile effects – a great choice for conservatories, kitchens and bathrooms.
What are Luxury vinyl tiles?
Virgin PVC granules or a mix of virgin and recycled PVC are placed together with a calcium carbonate filler, which is fed into a calendar/mixer at high temperature and mixed into a molten paste. This is then fed through a series of rollers to produce sheets of PVC at between 0.5 and 0.7mm gauge. This is then immediately cut into sheets and allowed to stand to cool and allow the material to settle.
Depending on the product being made, two or three backing layers are added, a printed film is then placed on top and then finally the wear layer, and most have a polyurethane coating that makes them much easier to clean, as dirt is unable to stick to the surface.
This is then placed between two metal sheets, and compressed the bottom plate to hold the material in place and the top one to emboss the surface to create a realistic textured finish.
This process also laminates/presses all of the layers together to create a tile or plank, once this has happened the material is removed and allowed to cool and settle once again for at least three or four days.
It is then cut into required shapes, packed and shipped ready to install.
What other items will I need in addition to my new luxury vinyl flooring?
In addition to the flooring, you will need accessory items to fit, finish and care for your new laminate floor.
In the doorways you will need:
- Door bars- these are necessary to bridge the gap between two floor coverings in different rooms.
. These will either be available to match the colour of your floor or the colour of your existing room décor.
- If you have a radiator in the room:
- Pipe Roses- these are necessary to cover any expansion gaps around the radiator pipes that go into the floor. These will either be available to match the colour of your floor or the colour of your existing room décor.
- For the feet of all furniture in the room:
- Floor protectors- A variety of felt pads are available to protect your new floor from the movement of furniture.
Once your floor is installed, you will need to maintain it looking good:
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Cleaning items- are available at the time of purchase to ensure you are able to maintain your floor as the manufacturer recommends, it is vital that you use the correct cleaning agents to avoid damage to your beautiful new floor.