Does anyone know anythign about cork flooring?

[navyeyelasH]

It looks really horrible when you see individual tiles but I really like the sounds of it. Can you ever get it so that it looks "normal"

I had cork tiles in a small bathroom in my first home - it was cheap and very warm to get out the bath onto. I would say dont buy unvarnished cork tiles as to varnish them yourself will cost a fortune in time and money trying to varnish them - cork soaks up the varnish.

So buy ready varnished cork tiles and just lay them down, they are easy to lay.

Thanks ivykaty44, I have seen the tiles but I'm thinking of doing this in a playroom and think the tiles would look horrible. I got the idea of cork from this article but can't seem to find anything that looks remotely the same?

Think I've gotten the wrong end of the stick somehow?

No - certainly didn't look like that! TBH the bathroom floor looked good as it was just a small space, we had cream walls and green and alltogether it looked good.

For a large area though I doubt it would look stunning - though very practicle and inexpensive, warm aswell.

we have cork plank flooring in our loft. i love it, it's warm, with a very subtle bounce, it's sustainable and works as insulation for heat and noise. there are different finishes, if you go for something over-sealed it doesn't feel particularly natural, but i feel ours has the balance about right, and it's still water/stain proof etc.

we went for a large natural pattern to try to avoid the pinboard look, actually i wish we'd gone darker, but not enough that i'd take it out and start again. by all accounts it was a piece of cake to lay, too (our builder did it in less than a day).

ours is "uniclic" if you look here "odysseus natural" is similar to ours, although now i'd go for something more like "hera". we wanted very much to see the natural colour/pattern but i'm sure you can get it stained in actual colours if that's what you're after.

have googled a little and it looks as though coloured cork is harder to come by (can find it in the us, but not here), in which case you're looking at (proper) lino instead, but iirc it costs an arm and a leg.

Thanks both - that website is great mileniwmffalcon; the thing is everything looks to cork-y! Maybe these things look very different in real life. The link I posted seems to look very wood like.

I love the various properties of cork, great for allergy sufferers, natural antibacterial, doesn't scratch as easily, has a bit of bounce, sound proofs, warm, spill "resistant", sustainable etc etc etc. All great stuff. And I don't mind a little bot of cork looking but I don't want it to look like a giant pin board IYSWIM esp cos it's not exactly cheap.

Do you think in the link I posted the cork in under some sort of laminate? Is that not pointless?

Another link from the company with a flor I really like

Maybe it's just the individual pieces that looks really rubbish but as a whole look really nice.

mileniwmffalcon would you say yours is noticeably cork at first glance?

oh it's the woody bit that they're talking about? i assumed it was the blue bit at the bottom. yes, reading the article they say "cork agglomerate core, natural wood layer and hardwearing surface" so you have essentially a laminate floor with a cork centre. it has most of the qualities of cork i guess but you can't see the cork - sounds like what you're after

this is the actual one we have, but i like the fact that it's obvious what it is. if i hadn't been so paranoid about making a small space look smaller i'd have gone for "country" instead.

bear in mind what you're looking at is municiple spaces, for a bedroom/playroom you don't need such a hardwearing finish, so it looks more natural still, i really love the finish on ours it's kind of satiny.

ohh well spotted mileniwmffalcon; so it's a laminate cork "sandwich". Now how the hell do I go about finding that on google!

The twist is really nice, it almost looks like marble - our space is fairly big-ish but has next to no natural light so am thinking about sticking to lighter colours.

I really like the look of stone, but worry it looks too much like a kitchen counter surface. I wonder if they do free samples......

i think it's the same people i bought mine off trading under a different name (there's no obvious contact info on the site). they do samples, there's a page to request them. tbh i think stone looks the most pinboard like, trend would be my pick of the lighter colours if you want it to look as little like cork as possible. the twist is yellower irl than it shows on my monitor.

Thanks mileniwmffalcon have just ordered the stone and trend. Now just need to figure out if I can find the laminate cork "sandwich" stuff.