Choose The Right Hard Flooring

Date Published:: 27/05/2008

Looking for a practical, durable, but good looking flooring for your home? Whether you need a new floor for your kitchen, bedroom, bathroom or living space, our top picks will give you a fabulous floor for longer.

By Clare Steel

Concrete Floors

If you're looking for hardwearing, cutting-edge flooring for your home, concrete is the ideal choice. Polished concrete tiles, generally around 35 to 40mm deep, come in a range of sizes or in made-to-measure panels, while a poured, polished or unpolished concrete floor will give you a seamless finish.

Be warned though, the beauty of a poured concrete floor is in its slight imperfections - if you want something absolutely free of blemishes and individuality, you need to go for something else. Both tiles and poured concrete floors come in a range of subtle colours and need to be fitted by a professional onto a completely level surface.

Which Rooms?

Use it in kitchens, bathrooms and living areas, and also on stairs. A poured concrete layer can be laid as thinly as 5mm deep, assuming your subfloor is level and properly prepared, so it needn't be restricted to rooms downstairs. Concrete is suitable for underfloor heating.

Tips & Advice

Concrete is not the cheapest of the solid flooring options, and poured concrete has to be installed professionally, which will bump the cost up still more. Once in place, though, it's pretty much maintenance-free.
If you are having large concrete tiles put down - or indeed any type of large tiles - your sub floor has to be perfectly flat. If it isn't, tiles will tilt slightly as they go down, creating an untidy finish.
Concrete flooring can come in a range of subtle colours, but it's well worth getting the company you choose to send you a range of samples before you choose. What looks one colour on a website, in a brochure, or even in your hand, will take on a whole different hue when in place.