3 Unique And Environmentally Friendly Flooring Options For Your Business

If you're a business owner who likes unique things, but you also want to help the environment, below are three sustainable flooring options for your business.

Cork

Cork is a renewable material that's also a flooring option. Cork comes from the cork oak tree that grows mainly in Portugal and Spain. These evergreen trees can grow up to 65 feet and they can live up to 200 years.

This tree species has thick bark with large knobs, which is known as the cork. Workers cut and peel the bark from the tree by hand to harvest the cork. The oak cork tree naturally sheds its outer bark and then produces more. When a cork oak tree is 25 years of age or older, stripping the bark every 9 to 12 years will not cause damage to the tree.

Cork is springy as you walk on it, so it acts as a shock absorber and a cushion for your feet and legs. This material works as a natural insulator, so it doesn't feel cold when you walk on it without wearing shoes. It's simple to take care of your cork floor and it requires little maintenance.

  1. Regularly sweep your cork floor with a soft bristled broom to get rid of the dust and dirt.
  2. Squirt a couple of drops of dish detergent in a bucket of warm water. Make sure that you don't have too many suds in your bucket because this can leave a soapy film on your floor.
  3. Dip a soft sponge mop into the water and thoroughly wring it out. Clean the cork floor with the mop and don't soak the floor with water. Too much water on your cork floor will cause the joints in the floor to bulge.
  4. After mopping, use a soft microfiber cloth to wipe off the floor and then let the floor air dry.

Wine Barrels

How about a floor for your business that's made from old wine barrels? Reclaimed barrels that once stored wine to aged perfection can now be your flooring material. During the fermentation process, a glaze develops on the barrels to give them a distinctive appearance for a unique floor.

Most wine is stored in white oak wine barrels and after about five years, the barrels are retired. Instead of destroying thousands of barrels, companies use them to make flooring.

First, the tannin that's inside of every barrel is scraped out by hand. Grapes used to make the wine naturally contain tannin in the skins and seeds. There are also tannins in oak barrels, which also add the unique flavoring to wines. After cleaning the barrels, the wood is dried out in a process that's similar to the way a microwave oven operates. This process straightens out the wood and then it's milled into tongue and groove planks.

Old Barn Wood

Another environmentally friendly flooring option is reclaimed barn wood. Antique barns supply the wood that's made into this unique flooring material. Old barn wood has a natural light brown or grey tone due to weathering and age. The color variations give each piece its one of a kind appearance.

Old barn wood is very durable and strong, which is important for a flooring material. As wood ages, it naturally expands and contracts, which makes it stronger. Wood that has completely dried out is less likely to split or warp. The closely compacted grain of aged wood makes it more stable.

Most old barn wood is old growth wood. This means that the wood came from trees that were hundreds of years old. The longer a tree grows, the harder the wood. This makes it more scratch resistant than hardwood flooring that's made from younger trees.

If you're looking for an unusual flooring material for your business, but you also want to help the environment, go to websites and select one of the flooring options above. After you choose your flooring material, contact a qualified company that does commercial floor installation to install your flooring material.


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