Eco-Friendly Flooring Options for Your House or Commercial Areas

When you live a green lifestyle, surely you want to incorporate as much as eco friendly items as possible in your life, don’t you? Well, if you’ve got traditional flooring in your house right now, you can absolutely change it with the environmentally friendly ones. Here are some options for you.

1. Bamboo

bamboo flooring by seier+seier wikimedia commons

There are about 1500 different species of bamboo that you can harvest across Asia, Africa, Australia, and some parts of North and South America. One of the main reasons why bamboo is sustainable is the fact that this species only needs about three to five years to fully mature.

It grows so quickly and there’s always a surplus of material, unlike wood. With this, you can get beautiful, pretty flooring without having to cut down trees.

The best place to install bamboo flooring is in bedrooms, living rooms, offices, and dry areas. Bamboo can’t deal with too much water and humidity very well, so avoid placing it in bathrooms, flood-prone basements, and other humid areas.

Bamboo is great for you who want to apply indie look, modern/contemporary setting, or just simply unique look to your house.

Oh, and when you settle for bamboo, check if the material was made with formaldehyde (a carcinogenic chemical) and find out its emission content. Why should you do this? Because some manufacturers use this in different amounts during the production process.

2. Rubber

Rubber tiles in Singapore by Jacklee Wikimedia Commons

Children or people with childlike spirit will find rubber flooring an ideal choice for them. If you are not one of those people and you simply have sustainable lifestyle, you’ll love this flooring because it’s made from recycled tires. You’ll save the tires that might have ended up in landfills and ive them a new purpose as a durable flooring material.

Before writing this article, I had no idea that you can turn used tires into flooring. I didn’t even know that rubber flooring exists! But if you’ve been to gyms, you’d probably have noticed that the flooring feels somehow a bit rubbery.

This flooring is perfect for children’s playroom or sunrooms because it’s easy to walk on, it’s not slippy, and it’s naturally waterproof. Apart from the ones mentioned, it’s best to use this flooring in kitchens, bathrooms, and also other wetter areas.

There are a number of color and pattern options for you to choose, so you can actually install this flooring anywhere you like, including bedroom. It’s not actually a common thing, but who are they to judge?

3. Interface’s Flooring Options

If you’re looking for a company that provides you eco-friendly flooring options, you can definitely choose this Atlanta-based company. Interface has launched carbon-neutral carpets and luxury vinyls that are of excellent quality. The best part is, consumers will get no extra cost!

This is actually a part of Interface’s program/project that had been in the development for over 20 years. The purpose of this program is “to encourage customers to take action and help them towards lowering their own carbon footprint.” Basically, you can get greener alternative without having to empty your pockets.

And with this, Interface has become an example to all traditional flooring company.

4. Glass Tiles

This flooring will also bring a smile to your face because it’s made with recycled beer and wine bottles as well as broken windows. Glass is actually one of the most commonly recycled materials in the U.S. There are a lot of them, making it an eco friendly flooring material. So if you live there, there’s no guilt in installing glass tiles in your house.

What makes this flooring lovely is that it comes in a variety of colors and glazes. You can be as creative and as unique as you want with this, without a doubt. The tiles reflect lights instead of absorbing them and they’re also resistant to mold, mildew, and water, long lasting, and so durable that you don’t have to worry about breaking it.

Use this flooring in bathrooms, kitchens, and in any room in your house or office! Basically, you can install this anywhere as long as they’re not outdoors.

5. Cork

If you can make a bag out of cork, then you can definitely turn this into flooring. If you’re not familiar with cork flooring, you might be thinkin that when you walk on it, it would feel like walking on wine corks. But no, it doesn’t feel like that. And if it helps, this flooring also comes in in varieties that won’t even remind you of a cork board.

Additionally, this flooring has a plethora of advantages, such as thermal insulation, acoustic barrier, fire resistance, comfort, hypoallergenic, as well as insect repellent properties, and its bounce back consistency that makes it hard for heavy furniture or high heels to damage it. Cork is also very durable; floor upgrade could last between 10 to 30 years.

Cork flooring is made from the thin bark of cork trees and the harvesting doesn’t damage the trees themselves. Firstly, the bark is turned into the wine corks as we know them, and then the leftover scraps are grounded and pressed into flooring and bulletin boards.

Don’t worry about cork tree abuse because this process happens once every 3 to 9 years, giving the trees time to row back their barks.

You can definitely use this flooring in bedrooms, living room, porch, hallways, kitchens, and any part of the house where you stand for long periods of time. However, you shouldn’t install this flooring in places where water can pool up because cork is prone to water damage.

6. Linoleum

Linoleum tile (the upper part) by blahedo Wikimedia Commons

Let me be honest, i hadn’t the slightest clue about this flooring. And, some of you might have not heard of it in a long time. That’s because linoleum is considered to be obsolete and nobody uses that anymore.

But, this flooring is surprisingly an eco friendly option. Linoleum is made from a mixture of linseed oil, cork dust, tree resins, wood flour, and ground limestone. Traditional linoleum requires glue, but the newer varieties enable you to lay them like tile.

The plus points of this flooring are its hypoallergenic properties, water tightness, improved air quality (because it doesn’t emit any harmful chemicals into the air), and you can find linoleum in many designs and color schemes. The lifespan of this flooring is about 25 to 40 years, so you won’t change it too often. Once you can’t just use it anymore, you can burn it and use it as a fuel.

Linoleum is great in kitchens, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t install this flooring in other areas like offices, hallways, living rooms, etc because this flooring can also withstand heavy traffic. Just remember to not put it in bathrooms or wet areas because it’s not waterproof.

Have you got one of these flooring options in your house? Are you considering to change it? Tell us in the comments below! Click here for a related reading.

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