HOW TO... Tips for Selecting & Caring for Natural Flooring Products

LISTS

Lifestyle/Decor Issues:

• What is the room used for?
• Is sound absorption needed?
• Kids, pets, or high traffic patterns?
• How much sunlight & for how many hours/day
• Do you want to completely change the room’s look?
• Radiant heat?
• Is the area above- or below-grade?

Budget Considerations:

• How long do you want it to last?
• For new flooring, what is the condition of the existing floor?
• Do you want to remove it or lay new flooring over top?
• Refurbish for sale?
• Refurbish for rent?
• For full flooring:
  • Is this a D-I-Y project?
  • Cost of subfloor preparation
  • Underlayment (built-in? man-made? cork?)
  • Cost of removal/disposal of existing flooring, if needed
  • Cost of moving furniture/appliances
  • All incidental material and installation costs
• Measurements for flooring—Make sketches of the room to be carpeted, approximate measures are fine at this point:
  • Use this quick square-footage estimator
  • Locations of doors (Do they open? Which direction, in or out?),
  • Location of windows,
  • Major pieces of furniture, architectural details (e.g. fireplace) that will need to be worked around
• For area rugs:
  • Don’t forget padding for rugs!
  • What is your balance point between rug quality & padding quality? (see “Tips” below)

Tips:

• Rugs
  • Buy the best quality padding you can afford, go by density rather than thickness. Good padding will add years to any rug.
  • Read & follow the manufacturer’s pad recommendations; failure to comply may void warranties.
  • If it’s necessary to choose between rug quality and padding, we’d put our money on the pad, all else being equal. Good padding will make a less-expensive rug seem more luxurious.
  • Is there a predominant color theme you want to play up or play down?
  • Are you wanting to visually expand the space or make it smaller & cozier?
  • Lighter colors will reflect more light and give the feeling of larger space.
  • Plain-colors show dirt and traffic more quickly than patterned surfaces
  • Thicker piles show traffic more than shorter piles
  • Large-scale patterns can expand a space, but proportions are critical and a too-large pattern may overpower a smaller room.
  • Darker, richer colors tend to cozy up large spaces
  • Use area rugs to define specific areas within a larger space and add seasonal variance. If laying on top of carpeting, works best for non-patterned carpeting with shorter pile.
• Bamboo, Cork, Tile, Stone Flooring—Tips for natural flooring selection don’t differ all that much from those for selecting traditional flooring so we’ll refer you to those pages in the Wood and Tile sections. However, here are a couple of links addressing suitability, and hardness ranking for wood and tile in general:
  • Bamboo & Cork: Hardness rankings chart  |  Features Summary
  • Tile & Stone: Summary of usage features  |  Durability Ratings

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• Dirt & Grit
  • Remove your street shoes when you come inside the house
  • Grit not removed by an inefficient, low-power vacuum will cut the fibers and destroy your rugs. Consider the purchase of a high-end vacuum or even installing a high-capacity central vac. Either will enhance the life of rugs by removing the deep-down grit. Padding will also help as it allows the suction of air from below up throught the rug, bringing along embedded dirt.
  • Vacuum often, even daily in high-traffic areas.
  • Have rugs professionally cleaned annually. Be sure to discuss with the cleaner—before-hand—your concerns about chemicals in the cleaning solution. There may well be a variety of natural cleaners available, but you need to make your concerns known. Detergent residue can be left behind by small rental units, causing rugs to become dirty more quickly. A professional cleaner will use machines powerful enough to deep clean, removing all traces of detergent as well as dirt.
• Stains (see below for links to specific stain removal pages)
  • Walking barefoot on rugs leaves behind natural skin oils which, over time, will stain them and attract dirt to the oily residue.
  • Spills are best blotted up, not scrubbed out (which is more apt to scrub them in). If spills occur clean them up immediately.
• Matting/Crushing
  • Use carpet protectors under furniture legs to help spread the weight.
  • Move rugs around periodically to relieve the furniture pressure and traffic wear on the fibers.
  • Dents can often be steamed out by holding a steam iron about two inches above the dent. Don’t place a hot iron directly on the fibers!
• Rugs—Some off-site links for cleaning, care, maintenance
  All links open in a new window. Note that these are general carpet care sites, not specifically for “natural” interests; the manufacturer of your particular rug may have better info for you. Always try to test any cleaning solutions on a tiny inconspicuous spot first.
  • Good Housekeeping Carpet Stain Removal Guide—A list of specific stains and GH’s recommendations for removing them
  • Wear-Dated’s general carpet care page
  • Beaulieu Carpet—huge selection of PDFs on carpet care and everything else you’d ever want to know about carpeting
  • Mohawk’s stain removal guides
  • Shaw Carpet Care Guides—carpet care, stain removal, general cleaning tips
  • Stainmaster—stain removal guide

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• Bamboo & Cork floors share many qualities of regular wood flooring and can benefit from the same care advised for wood floors. However, always heed manufacturer instructions above others.
  • Cork—only use cleaners recommended by the manufacturer; use a barely damp cloth to wipe up spills, dry with a towel; don’t wet mop or let water stand. If your cork floor is waxed, it may occasionally need rewaxing and buffing—most cork is finished with a urethane coat these days.
• Read the installation tips for hardwood flooring, much is pertinent to the installation of bamboo and cork as well.
• Care of tile and stone floors is covered in the Tile section.

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