Floors have become an essential element of interior design
In the past, most homes featured tile or stone flooring. Historically, the floor was a part of the home's construction, though some homes might have had nicer parquet planks laid over the surface.
Today, almost all flooring is floating, meaning that the surface of the floor itself lies loosely "floating" over more basic flooring made from particleboard or concrete. As a result, today's flooring is more of an interior design element than a building material. Now, you can simply swap out flooring during renovations. Handy homeowners wishing to install ship-deck flooring in their home office or lay a bit of tiling in the hall can simply install a new floor without having to hire a carpenter. A traditional tiled floor requires extensive preparation to make sure the tiles can be affixed to the floor. With a modern click-togetherfloor, you can lay a new layer of floating flooring over your existing floor without any major preparations.
Click-togetherflooring can even be moved and used in a different room.
Easily swapped flooring has opened up exciting new opportunities for interior design enthusiasts. Let your imagination run wild!
Along with the transition in flooring away from a home construction material into an interior design element comes wider variety on the flooring market, so many people are choosing to install more unconventional flooring.
The requirements for flooring have changed, and so have the opportunities.
Flooring has become just as important for the feeling of a room as its wall color, carpeting, wall-hangings or furniture. The material, finish and size of the planks or panels provide an opportunity to make a major impact. You no longer have to have the same flooring as everybody else if you don't want to. With flooring as an interior design detail, trend-conscious homeowners are being given another way to be creative with their home environment.
There's a lot to think about when choosing flooring. What factors do I need to prioritize? Practical or aesthetic considerations? Hopefully, both. What is it going to cost? Which material? Stone, tile, wood, linoleum, cork, laminate, HDF? What type of finish? Blank, matt, semi-matt, with or without relief? Color? Seams or no seams? Brushed? How long will the flooring stay in the room?
Lime green, cherry or royal blue? Buying a floor can feel like a trip to the candy store. Red-and-white striped flooring, perhaps? Or maybe a chocolate brown glaze?
The possibilities are endless when it comes to creating a totally unique room with plenty of character, and it doesn't have to be as hard as it might seem. The click-togetherfunction makes installation easy. The tough part is deciding the type of flooring you want. Look around you. What kind of furniture do you have? With what other types of material will the flooring share a border? What is the general mood of the area you're decorating? Should the floor itself take center stage, or should it be used to make the furniture stand out?
We at Bjoorn have noticed a trend towards either very dark flooring or its opposite, very light flooring. These days, we are seeing a lot of wood floors with a matt gloss or waxed and brushed finish. Oak is as popular as ever and it's being made more exciting with a smoked finish or white glaze. We have noticed an increased interest in exotic types of wood like Brazilian rosewood and merbau. Wider, longer planks are in demand and floors are trending towards a more homogenous impression. Laminate flooring is looking less synthetic and has begun to either surpass the original product or take on a variety of patterns and prints. The latest newcomer to the scene is high-gloss flooring in pure white or black. Consumers are opting to buy with the environment in mind, which explains the increased interest in cork and linoleum flooring.
Cool and trendy. Once you start taking interior design cues from your favorite restaurants, lobbies and bars, it's not long before you're installing high-gloss laminate flooring in your home. A floor that both oozes character and gives an impersonal, sterile and austere impression. Because this flooring is not pure laminate flooring, it lacks the coldness and hardness of a laminate. A touch of Miami or Berlin in your own home.
Soft and lively flooring. The ultra environmentally conscious -- and the rest of us -- can rest easy knowing that the tree used for this flooring, which is usually of Portuguese origin, still stands, albeit naked, awaiting the growth of new bark. Cork was extremely popular in the 60s and 70s, and most people who grew up or designed kitchens in this era will remember it. As with most retro trends, it enjoyed plenty of enthusiasm in its heyday, and you can count on a comeback. Cool, subtle flooring that's ideal in every way: on-trend, environmentally friendly, and easy on the eyes and feet.
Bamboo is an exciting material because it is considered to be a variety of grass rather than a type of wood. A relatively new material on the Nordic market, bamboo has quickly become a favorite on the flooring market. After just 4-6 years, the bamboo stem is ready to be harvested and cut at its full height of 35 meters. A new bamboo shoot appears in the existing root system, and the plant grows back with incredible speed. China's forested regions consist of up to 80% bamboo, the most rapidly growing plant on earth.
Bamboo floors are one of the most environmentally sustainable flooring options on the market. The World Wildlife Federation recommends bamboo floors and building materials as a way to save the environment and use resources responsibly. Bamboo is extremely resistant to damage and wear compared with ordinary oak flooring and boasts a relative hardness of 7.4 compared to oak's 3.7 and 1.8 for pine.
More advanced technology has allowed for an increase in the authenticity of synthetic materials. At the same time, playfulness in design has become popular, with blue-glazed broad oak planks, different geometrical patterns, prints, and romantic garlands as examples.
This type of flooring makes an exclusive and elegant impression while adding clear directional definition to a room. Small, repeating patterns make the planks appear blend in with one another to create a single, homogenous surface. The floor looks treated, with an exciting appearance that has garnered appreciation among design aficionados.
Unlike solid wood floors, both engineered wood flooring and veneer flooring are relatively stable regarding the shape of the planks. Of course, there are natural shifts in height and width with humidity, because woodenfibers swell under increased humidity, but they will not buckle if properly installed. When installing, it is important to remember to leave a gap along the walls and to have a moisture barrier for concrete floors. Engineered wood flooring planks may be sanded as many times as their solid oak, walnut, or pine counterparts, because a wood plank can only be sanded down to the floor joints. Bjoorns.com’s wooden flooring options are available with many different surface treatments such as polished, matte polished, brushed, natural oiled, white oiled as well as lye-primed and oiled.
All wood is renewable and can be recycled. Light woods such as ash, beech, maple, and pine become darker over time due to exposure to sunlight, while darker types of wood like walnut and cherry become lighter. Many types of wood, such as oak, beech, and birch acquire a more golden tone with age.
Laminate flooring comes in many different varieties. Laminate can be found in many varieties of wood, tile, and stone, but its is also available in clean, minimalistic designs. We offer everything from rough, patinated pine planks to classic oak parquet flooring in light and dark wood. Due to its relatively low cost, laminate flooring can make renovations, like a kitchen update, feasible at a reasonable cost. Also, slate and tile laminates are a cost-effective alternative to actual stone and tile. With click-togetherflooring, you avoid the expensive groundwork, since the flooring clicks together on any type of hard, level foundation. Resistance to wear varies between cheap laminate flooring and those of higher quality, but in most home environments the quality of even low-priced options will suffice.
Don't forget that at Bjoorn.se, you can buy much more than just parquet and laminate flooring. We also have an assortment of "floating" flooring, meaning flooring that fits together with a single click, with surface options such as cork and linoleum. Both of these materials are appealing from an ecological standpoint because both cork and linoleum are renewable resources. Common to both materials is that they are relatively soft and insulating, providing a warm and quiet indoor environment. These are attributes that may come in handy in a kitchen, for example, where fragile objects may often break when dropped on hard floors, not to mention the difference an organic cork or linoleum floor can make on a cold winter morning.