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Choosing the right commercial flooring for your business requires you to strike the right balance between durability and maintenance, while keeping safety and budget in mind – not to mention what will look aesthetically pleasing in your premises.
Common flooring solutions to consider for your space include Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT) for style and durability, carpet tiles for offices that need a little extra soundproofing, and epoxy resin flooring for industrial or high-moisture spaces.
When seeking a supplier, it’s often best to look locally for a company that can handle every aspect of the job – from initial site visits through to installation. For example, if you’re looking for commercial flooring in Manchester, consider searching for northern resin flooring retailers and manufacturers.
Selecting high-performance surfacing materials
When choosing the flooring for a commercial space, there are three key things to keep in mind – the extent to which each is the highest priority will depend entirely on your industry.
Durability
For commercial spaces that experience heavy foot traffic, a durable floor is a must. Look for flooring materials that can withstand wear and tear, such as commercial vinyl, timber, or resin.
Safety
Safety should be a priority in commercial environments to prevent slips, trips, and falls. For areas prone to moisture or spills, like kitchens and washrooms, choose flooring with anti-slip properties, such as rubber or resin with added non-slip additives.
Low maintenance
Easy-to-maintain flooring is essential in commercial settings to minimise downtime and maintenance costs. Choose flooring that is easy to clean and stain-resistant, such as luxury vinyl tile (LVT) or rubber.
What to consider for high-traffic areas
Commercial spaces typically experience an incredibly high volume of traffic every single day. From office buildings to warehouses, shops and school corridors, there’s a flooring solution to suit any commercial space.
Retail store flooring
Retail and commercial environments demand a durable, low-maintenance floor.
Hard-wearing, decorative, anti-slip and cost-effective vinyl flooring products create an aesthetically pleasing shopping experience for customers, while still being durable enough to cope with high footfall. Retail flooring solutions often include versatile designs and multiple product choices that can create something that truly reflects your store. Smooth resin flooring products can be infused with an infinite variety of coloured flakes or quartz finishes to create hundreds of unique designs.
Warehouse flooring
A busy warehouse is one of the toughest environments for floors. Industrial warehouse flooring has to withstand daily traffic from HGVs, pallet trucks and forklift trucks, as well as supporting high-rise racking and foot traffic. Concrete flooring can quickly become uneven from heavy traffic and is prone to damp or feeling cold, which is why you need heavy-duty warehouse floors.
A high-quality seamless resin warehouse flooring solution is ideal for facilities requiring additional protection, especially because it can withstand regular cleaning regimes. A resin warehouse floor creates a flat, wall-to-wall seamless surface, which can be complemented with line markings and coloured walkways for a safe warehousing environment.
Resin systems are specially developed to work with demanding surroundings and can be specified in a range of finishes. Resin flooring for warehouses can include chemical and impact resistance, as well as anti-slip, anti-static, matt or gloss surfaces to create rigid and flexible warehouse flooring systems.
Office flooring
Carpet tiles provide comfort underfoot, help keep the room warm and absorb sound brilliantly, making them an ideal choice for office environments, libraries, or care homes.
Carpet tiles can be installed in a variety of colours and patterns and can even be matched to your company’s branding. Carpet tiles do require regular cleaning and maintenance to prevent staining and wear, but they have the added advantage of being able to replace a single damaged tile instead of a whole floor.
Commercial Kitchens
There’s a wide range of food industry flooring options which are ideal for food and drink processing, packaging facilities and commercial kitchens that need to maintain safety standards. Flooring in food manufacturing facilities needs to be durable, chemical and temperature-resistant, and anti-slip, to ensure everyone working in and around the kitchen area can work safely. One of the best flooring solutions for kitchens is resin flooring, which can be specially manufactured using antimicrobial resin to further combat dirt and bacteria.
Hospital and healthcare flooring
BioCote® flooring is a specialist antimicrobial solution – ideal for environments which demand a high standard of hygiene, such as in hospitals and healthcare facilities, due to the excellent bacteria-resistant and easy-to-clean properties of resin. John Lord, a supplier of commercial flooring in Manchester, is the only UK resin flooring company to be a partner of BioCote®, and they’re able to offer their exclusive range of resin flooring with the antimicrobial technology option.
Schools and universities
Flooring for educational buildings must be able to handle a lot of foot traffic and support the learning environment. From classrooms and lecture theatres to laboratories, sports halls, communal spaces, and libraries, there’s not one single flooring solution ideal for an entire campus, but resin, rubber and LVT flooring is often used in combination across different spaces to create a seamless effect that runs throughout.
Restaurant flooring
As well as being aesthetically pleasing, hospitality and leisure flooring solutions need to withstand a high volume of traffic, be anti-slip, and easy to maintain and clean. When catering to large volumes of people daily and offering food and drink services, you will need a high-quality hospitality flooring solution, like hygienic resin flooring for hotels and bars. Similar to an education setting, hotel flooring solutions need to include more than just resin or vinyl flooring; you will also need flooring solutions for washrooms, changing facilities and gym or spa rooms, where a hygienic spill and waterproof hospitality and leisure flooring is imperative.
Also read: Mezzanine Flooring Design Ideas to Transform Your Workspace
