Nature has bestowed on us beautiful architectural surfacing materials that make grand and lovely interior hard flooring finishes. As integral parts of a building structure, hard flooring materials are mainly permanent and therefore cannot be removed at will.
There are many such materials available for hard surface floorings, but many of the 'not so common' ones have unique, almost unrecognised, and can be found all around the world are:
- Slate
- Stone
- Quarry tiles
Slate As A Hard Flooring Material
Slate is a 100% natural hardwearing stone. This hard flooring material has a colouration that ranges from a dull grey tone, to a very rich bluish-grey and sometimes greyish-green colour.
Traditionally, slate was used extensively for flooring works, and it is gaining a new popularity today as a beautiful hard flooring. Interior designers who cherish a blend of a past era with today's modern features have worked successfully using slate as a hard floor finish.
Asides using this hard flooring element for floors, it is also good for fireplaces, kitchen cabinet worktops, fish ponds and landscape beautifying projects.
Slate however has a disadvantage in that when wet, it becomes slippery. In this case, people who have slate hard flooring installed treat it with non-slip materials. This way, the wet and slippery hard floor can become safe to use for the interior, but most especially for landscape works as a rain downpour will keep the hard floor from being slippery, thus avoiding bad falls.
Stone
The use of natural stone hard flooring affords an array of advantages for today's designer, interior decorator and homeowner. And even though stone is a bit expensive, once installed, this type of hard flooring needs very little maintenance, and the great news is that it will last a lifetime.
Materials used for stone flooring comes from elements such as limestone, yorkstone and sandstone slabs. Chips of any of these materials can also be used effectively as a stone floor finish, by embedding the chips in a cement mix, allowing the resulting hard flooring to dry thoroughly. Finally sealing it with a high grade water-based sealant of varnish. A point to note however - varnish may dull the final colour slightly, but a clear good sealant will not.
Stone floors are suitable hard flooring finishes for those who desire a country style home, a farmhouse style kitchen, or for unique conservatories.
To care for stone floors is very simple. All that is required is regular sweeping and an occasional wash. And if the sealant applied to this hard flooring seems to be wearing off after some years, it can be re-applied again. This re-application only needs to be done about every five years or a bit more, depending on how worn out the floor may have become.
Quarry Tiles
The hardest of the 3, quarry tiles have a high silica content which gives it a very hard surface that will not absorb grease, oils, water, or any other household liquids. The perfect hard flooring material with enormous strength and resilience.
Traditionally, quarry tiles were laid in dairies and farmhouse kitchens or outdoor cooking areas. Today, they are still used for these areas but architect and interior designers have found use in quarry tiles as wonderful and unique hard flooring materials.
Quarry tiles must be laid on concrete set in a cement mix. Adhesives cannot be used for the installation of quarry tiles.
Just as in stone, the maintenance of this hard flooring is very simple as one just needs to sweep and mop, thus making it look great permanently, for a lifetime.
All these, and all other hard flooring materials have their individual merits, so deciding on a choice is not so hard.
Virginia Iyabo Smith - Virginia Iyabo is a professional interior designer, an interior design consultant, and a custom furniture designer. She started writing ...
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