Christopher Capobianco

Resilient floor tile has been specified for commercial interiors for decades. Yet, these products have not made it into Main Street commercial applications on a regular basis. Vinyl composition tile (vct) and its predecessors va tile and asphalt tile have been around for so long that many facility managers and flooring retailers often just select vct samples when thinking of hard surface options.

I often encounter flooring dealers, contractors and architects who are reluctant to work with cork because of past problems or the perception that it is “complicated” to work with. Although classified as resilient flooring, cork is more like wood with regard to handling, installation and finishing. Many of the things I will say here about cork could have the words “just like wood” added. For this column, we’ll cover traditional cork tile as opposed to cork floating floors and vinyl wearlayer/vinyl backed cork tile.

Last year, I returned to a world I had known for most of the ‘90s-but left around 2000.  In 2007 I began calling on architects, designers, end users, dealers and flooring contractors. I was representing a variety of products for commercial interior finishes, including several flooring products. What I have found has been enlightening, encouraging-and occasionally disappointing. It’s not just how new flooring products are brought to market these days but also the specific requests being made by designers and other decision makers.

We heard a lot of positive feedback from readers after my column on terminology (“Don’t Call It Linoleum If It’s Sheet Vinyl,” NFT January 2005).  Of course there were some people who suggested that I need to get a life. “Who cares if you call sheet vinyl linoleum or call an underlayment a subfloor?” “Does anybody really use the term ‘substrate’?” My feeling is that if we have industry standard definitions like those in ASTM F 141, Standard Terminology Relating to Resilient Floor Coverings, then we should use them and educate our customers and colleagues likewise. This way we all speak the same language and we’re not confusing our customers.

We heard a lot of positive feedback from readers after my column on terminology (“Don’t Call It Linoleum If It’s Sheet Vinyl,” NFT January 2005).  Of course there were some people who suggested that I need to get a life. “Who cares if you call sheet vinyl linoleum or call an underlayment a subfloor?” “Does anybody really use the term ‘substrate’?” My feeling is that if we have industry standard definitions like those in ASTM F 141, Standard Terminology Relating to Resilient Floor Coverings, then we should use them and educate our customers and colleagues likewise. This way we all speak the same language and we’re not confusing our customers.

Make no mistake, there is a lot of very high quality, high performance flooring material out there today. My experience is that many will outperform any of the vintage products that my grandfather used to sell. Still, to be fair, some time-honored resilient products like linoleum and cork have been making a comeback in recent years, so I guess you could make a case that the products of yesteryear are still sought after!

The largest selling resilient flooring product in terms of square footage is Vinyl Composition Tile or VCT. It's inexpensive to buy and easy to install but like any other flooring product there are ways to do it well and ways to cut corners so the installation will not be as good as it could be. I see a lot of VCT installations in my travels, from schools to supermarkets to big department stores.

Cork flooring is one of the most interesting floor covering products in use today, but is also one of the most misunderstood. This is something I learned this year when I started presenting a seminar called "The Fascinating World of Cork."