Want to give your kitchen flooring a much needed update? Sure, you’ve probably examined the usual suspects – linoleum, vinyl, perhaps even stained hard wood – but have you considered something a little more exotic? Think bamboo and cork. Yes! Bamboo and cork! Here’s what you need to know.
Cork – A Great Opportunity to Add Style to Your Kitchen Flooring.
Comfort with Each Step
As with the cork in a bottle of wine, cork flooring “gives” when confronted with pressure, and is thus comfortable to walk on. Further, cork’s ability to absorb impact means you’ll end up with fewer broken plates if, like me, you occasionally drop one while emptying your dishwasher. (If you have young, accident prone children, this feature will serve you and your wallet well!) But don’t worry about your kitchen flooring being too soft – cork springs back to its original shape, which is, in this case, flat.
A Wide Variety of Colors
Cork flooring doesn’t just come in brown, which is what you might think as a result of a life around cork bulletin boards. Rather, you can get it in a multitude of colors, including red and green.
Green Kitchen Flooring?
Because cork comes from tree bark, and not the tree’s base wood, cork isn’t harmful to the environment. So when you get cork kitchen flooring, you aren’t contributing to deforestation.
Sound Sensitive?
Because cork takes in sound waves, it will help prevent noise from travelling in your house, meaning a rambunctious family activity won’t spread to the rest of the home – at least not by sound waves.
Bamboo – Not Just for Pandas
Another Environmentally Conscious Floor Choice
Bamboo is actually not tree wood. Rather, it’s a grass. As a result, deforestation isn’t necessary for you to enjoy a bamboo floor. Essentially, by walking day in and day out on bamboo, you’re being environmentally conscious.
Rich Beauty
Bamboo has the color of really light beer, imparting a gold-like/yellowish glow to your kitchen. This will bring a warm, inviting feel to your kitchen with an exotic accent. Since there are few color options for bamboo flooring, make sure you are comfortable with its color before purchase. Further, you can choose the grains in your bamboo flooring to run either horizontally or vertically along the plank, which is the building block that bamboo flooring usually comes in.
Not Just Beauty
Watching pandas chew bamboo in the wild, you might think it breaks easy, making your kitchen floor unacceptably fragile. But bamboo is actually stronger than oak! Consequently, it can withstand the constant pounding a high traffic kitchen is subjected to as well as easily support heavy furniture and appliances.
Perhaps Cork and Bamboo are Viable Options For You….
So if you want practical yet unique kitchen flooring, consider cork and bamboo. They each run about $5 per square foot, putting it slightly on the expensive side. But if you don’t mind the extra expense, you could have a unique kitchen you could be proud of. About
The Author...
Looking to learn more about Kitchen Flooring and kitchen design ideas? Then visit www.kitchen-expert.info for creative ways to decorate your kitchen.
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