You don’t have to choose between sustainable floors, price and your own personal style.
Imagine a floor that gives your toddler sure footing – and still looks stylish by the time they reach the teenage years.
Picture a floor that stands up to spills, stains and active pets – no harsh chemicals or cleaners required.
Envision the floor that matches your style – and your values. It’s mindfully manufactured and promotes high-quality indoor air, which helps your family live well.
Whether you’re renovating a starter home, building a forever home, or somewhere in between, resilient flooring meets your needs today and for years to come.
Understanding the name
The term “resilient” is often used to describe a community, business or even a natural area that demonstrates strength during hardship and the ability to adjust under pressure.
“Resilient” is also the name for a category of flooring products that possess the physical strength and flexibility to stand up to nearly anything your family can throw at it, spill on it, drop on it, or run across it. It has more “give” than hardwood, stone, cement, or ceramic tile but less
than carpet, making it an ideal choice for everyday life.
The resilient flooring category is comprised of many specific floor types. While architects and designers are familiar with the phrase “resilient floors,” it’s quite likely you’ve encountered these floors under specific product names, such as luxury vinyl tile, rubber, linoleum, or cork floors.
7 types of resilient flooring
The popularity of luxury vinyl tile (LVT) has blossomed due to its incredible design capabilities. With LVT, you can delight in the natural beauty and distinctive texture of wood and stone without straining your family’s budget. Your guests may not be able to tell the difference between the LVT you choose and more expensive flooring systems like hardwood, stone or ceramic tile. Plus, LVT is water resistant, pet friendly, and highly durable, which helps limit waste over time. Another way LVT reduces waste is through modular installation – meaning you can easily replace individual tiles or planks as needed, without having to replace the entire floor.
FLEXIBLE LUXURY VINYL TILE
The popularity of luxury vinyl tile (LVT) has blossomed due to its incredible design capabilities. With LVT, you can delight in the natural beauty and distinctive texture of wood and stone without straining your family’s budget. Your guests may not be able to tell the difference between the LVT you choose and more expensive flooring systems like hardwood, stone or ceramic tile. Plus, LVT is water resistant, pet friendly, and highly durable, which helps limit waste over time. Another way LVT reduces waste is through modular installation – meaning you can easily replace individual tiles or planks as needed, without having to replace the entire floor.
Rigid luxury vinyl tile
Rigid core flooring (also called multilayer flooring) provides all the advantages of luxury vinyl tile – plus a few more. It provides exceptional underfoot comfort, sound absorption and warmth. It also provides greater resistance to water, humidity and temperature variations, making it a great choice for bathrooms, kitchens, laundry rooms and entryways.
SHEET VINYL
Today’s sheet vinyl flooring typically comes in 6’, 12’ or even greater widths so you can create a seamless floor with excellent top-down moisture protection. It comes in an array of styles and
colors that can mimic the aesthetic of more expensive stone and hardwood floors. Sheet vinyl combines lasting performance, low maintenance costs and sound-damping benefits into one great choice for budget-conscious homeowners. Many sheet vinyl products are designed for simple, DIY-friendly installation.
LINOLEUM
Linoleum floors are made from natural, rapidly renewable ingredients. Linseed oil (derived from flax plants) is combined with limestone, pine resin, cork, wood flour and dye, and eventually rolled onto a jute fiber backing. Many linoleum flooring products also integrate recycled content. This durable flooring type withstands heavy traffic and scratches over decades, without losing its color.
CORK
This material is renewable and, where facilities exist, recyclable. It can be harvested every nine years from each cork oak tree – a significantly faster rate of renewal than the hardwood trees commonly used for floors. For flooring products, cork is ground up, compressed, and formed into sheets bonded with resins. Some manufacturers incorporate recycled cork and cork waste. Cork flooring is a natural insulator that muffles sound and helps homeowners use energy more efficiently. Cork is not an ideal choice for rooms that get wet – such as bathrooms – or homes with pets.
RUBBER
Rubber flooring is durable, easy to clean, and ideal for hard-wearing commercial or residential environments, including restaurant kitchens and gyms. Excellent slip resistance, water resistance and softness also make rubber a smart choice for your basement, rec room or utility room. Rubber flooring is available in a vast array of colors and textures.
VINYL COMPOSITION TILE
Vinyl composition tile (VCT) is most often used in commercial and institutional applications, such as supermarkets and schools. However, it’s also a very popular DIY product because it is easy to handle and install. Low-cost, durable VCT can be used in a wide range of color and design combinations to create unique, custom effects. It’s made in the USA of North American limestone, a highly abundant natural resource, combined with vinyl and color pigments.
Multi-layered beauty
You’ve just read about benefits like water resistance, sound damping and gorgeous designs. But the beauty of resilient flooring is more than skin deep. All seven types of resilient flooring are beautifully made – and beautifully responsible.
Mindful manufacturing
Prominent manufacturers have committed to sourcing, designing and manufacturing resilient flooring in ways that reflect sustainability leadership.
Living well
Wellbeing starts inside, with carefully curated products designed with health in mind. Resilient flooring promotes good indoor air quality and a clean, healthy interior environment.
Made for life
Amazing durability protects your investment in new floors. It also helps protect the environment – resilient flooring lasts so long it reduces waste over the lifetime of your home.
Your next steps
Explore the benefits of resilient flooring in more detail.
Envision the styles you want for your home.
Find your floor made by mindful manufacturers.
