Cork Flooring

Cork is primarily used as bottle stoppers. Champagne lovers very well know that. But did you know that this material is the new hit for having a quirky quality cork flooring?

It's magnificent how a simple bark from a cork oak Quercus Suber tree from Portugal, Spain, Mediterranean or North Africa, could bring new world innovations to our modern-day furnishings including cork flooring; and it all started from punching out bottle stoppers from a tree bark and the invention of the high-power grounding machinery. Cork punching operations for making bottle stoppers produces too much cork 'waste' materials. Yet there are a lot of reasons why corks should not at all go to waste.

Any other things that are made from cork grains owe to the cork's many quality characteristics, cork flooring being the most benefited. First, corks exhibit lightness and elasticity. These features are great especially for installing cork flooring with ease and haste as compared to fitting stone material flooring such as tiles or concrete. Second, corks have low conductivity, making it just as heat insulating (warming though fire proof) compared with wood materials, only with the addition that cork flooring also has low conductivity for sounds and vibrations. Cork underlayment used under hardwood, ceramic tile, carpet and laminate flooring is most effective and economical for sound control. Third, although corks have warmth and softness, it also has density and compressibility, making it easy to resist pressure from heavy objects. Lastly, corks contain impermeability and resistance qualities. Its honey-comb structure and suberin makes it resistant to dust streaks, gases and fluid, making it less susceptible to rotting, hence easily maintainable and even hypoallergenic for the kitchen. And since it is protectively finishing-coated, cork flooring is also resilient to minor scratching from animal pets and protected from dragged furniture having protective pads.

Preferably, cork flooring is best and is usually in the form of floating floor planking with moisture barrier polyethylene since it shows less joint lines from expansions due to temperature changes (much like wood flooring). Also it is quicker to install than cork flooring parquet tiles, hence more expensive. Yet as always, maintenance adds to durability, and expensive investment is quality guaranteed.
Cork is the ideal material for products ranging from stoppers to buoys and floats, from clothing to coasters, and from sealing materials to cork flooring, even fashionable chairs. There is never any waste within the cork manufacturing industry. Every scrap of cork is used in one way or another. And why won't it be. There is no other material, either natural or manmade, having all the characteristics that are unique to the cork.