Cork Flooring Reviews
If you are finding it hard to find reviews on cork flooring, you’re not alone. The simple fact is, there aren’t very many people who have owned cork floors. The cork flooring industry receives roughly 1% of flooring purchases. That means you need to find 100 people to discover 1 person who has owned a cork floor.
If that’s not hard enough, now you have to find the person who has left a review about cork. Again, we are talking 1% of 1%. What you will find are people who either love it, or hate it. And the haters are the people most likely to write reviews. Not always – but more often than not.
Here is what you will find for reviews:
The Lover: “It is soft and quiet. I can’t believe how much difference this floor has made in my home! I can stand all day in the kitchen without needing to sit down. My children play all day in their rooms and I can’t hear a sound! My husband can watch the TV as loud as he wants and it doesn’t bother me. Even my son’s stereo has a hard time getting through! I love it! I can’t imagine buying another type of flooring!”
The Hater: “It shows every mark, every scratch. I can’t walk in heals on my own floor because it leaves dents all over the place. The flooring in the bathroom turned soggy and needs to come out! My kitchen floor is ruined because the seams are showing and I can’t get the dirt out! I will never buy this floor again.”
The reason why the Hater has had this experience is of the poor quality cork flooring improperly installed and improperly explained/maintained. How many times have we, as Forna representatives, had to explain to flooring sales people the benefits and pitfalls of cork flooring? Our guess is it is now into the hundreds. We’ve exhausted ourself explaining all the details of cork to a flooring sales professional, the professional contractor, the professional flooring installer and the home DIYer.
We’ve been on the other end of the phone when a client is desperately looking to save their 4 year old cork floor. We’ve heard the exasperation in their voice when I tell them the installation was wrong, the application of the product was wrong and that the website (for their product) states that a bathroom is not the place to install a cork floating floor (which the sales person forgot to mention). Of course the floor is ruined – when you wax a polyurethane finish you are going to ruin your floor. If you install a floor with Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) or High Density Fibreboard (HDF) in bathrooms the humidity will ruin the floor. And a cork floor in a kitchen needs to be site-finished to seal the seams against moisture.
And by the way, a cork floor – like any hardwood – will require regular maintenance. That maintenance includes damp mopping with pH neutral hardwood flooring cleaners specifically designed for polyurethane finishes. The floor must be swept or vacuumed regularly to remove finish-eating grit from trapping itself into the very fabric of the floor. And every 3-7 years a cork floor’s finish must be renewed.