Hair salon owners have long purchased FreeStyle commercial flooring for its ease of installation and the comfort and support it provides stylists. SelecTech, makers of FreeStyle tiles, recently conducted a stain test on its FreeStyle Commercial Resilient Tiles, the type most commonly used by hair salons, to demonstrate a third major benefit—stain resistance.

“You think of a hair salon floor and you think hair, but spilled dyes are the true maintenance issue,” said Thomas Ricciardelli, president of SelecTech. “What compounds the dye spillage issue is sometimes those spills go undetected and can settle in on the flooring and become permanent. With this test, we wanted to use a worst-case scenario where stains remained on the tile for one, three, six hours and for one full 24-hour day. And we used an amount of dye that no salon would ever not notice over those periods of time.”

SelecTech used its Cherry Block and Graystone tiles to provide a variety of colors—dark and light. Next 3” x 3” squares were taped off on each tile. Then three different types of dyes—Ultra Blonde Violet, High Definition Red Red and Dark Brown Neutral Ash—were applied to each square, completely filling the square within the tape. After sitting the predetermined time—one, three or six hours—SelecTech removed the dye with a putty knife and Zep industrial cleaner purple. A second round of tests were done similarly with a square being filled with dye and left for 24 hours before being removed in the same fashion.

The results for both tests revealed no staining whatsoever after one, three, six and 24 hours. This result was further reinforced when two strips of tapes were removed and there were no lines from where the dye had originally been placed.

“There are many flooring companies that make the claim of being stain-resistant,” said Ricciardelli. “We felt it important to back that up and our FreeStyle tiles came through in fine fashion. Where our tiles do not have to be glued in, it’s also easy for salon maintenance staff to remove a stained tile to give it a thorough cleaning as necessary, and then reinstall the tile, good as new.”

For more information, visit http://freestyleflooring.com.