Hicksville, N.Y.—With all the technological advancements made recently in the resilient segment, mills can make their products look like anything they want, such as ceramic tile, slate and hardwood flooring. Stooping over to see and feel if it is the real thing is becoming the norm in flooring showrooms throught the country.

And, with the advent of certain surface advancements, resilient flooring is protected from traffic like it has never been before.

“Our industry has made great strides in offering warmer visuals within the resilient category,” said Michael Freedman, executive vice president for Innovision Flooring, U.S. distributors of LG Floors. “No longer is the consumer faced with institutional visuals and drab color and pattern choices. We now offer warmer patterns to create a homelike atmosphere in a commercial environment.

“Color palettes have been increased to offer neutral to vibrant color choices,” he added. “The industry is now focused on creating new patterns that will enhance the overall environment of a facility rather then the past of just trying to blend in. Naturelife from LG Floors is a perfect example of this with its wood grain visuals.”

“In the fall of last year, we reinforced our Clean-Sweep coating with aluminum oxide and polycarbonate, the same material used in bulletproof glass,” said Michele Zelman of Armstrong Floor Products, North America. “This new combination, called Clean-Sweep Plus, is now available in all of our Best and Luxury products, including Natural Fusion, Rhythms, Highland Park, Destinations and Starstep.”

According to Amanda Teyeb, marketing coordinator for Centiva, “Surface texture has been the significant trend over the last few years. However, at Centiva, offering a variety of surface textures has always been a specialty of ours.

“Distinctive to Centiva is the ability to offer the client several different surface options on many of our products,” she explained. “For example, a customer can choose our Contour plank in a tick, sawn, frost, or rough surface texture and this is a standard order for us.”

In recent years, surface advancements for resilient flooring have greatly enhanced their visual appeal and performance, noted David Sheehan, director of resilient business, Mannington Mills. “Those advancements can be chronicled in the following order:

“JT-88 in the vinyl wearlayer; the addition of urethane in the wearlayer; the combination of chemical and mechanical embossing (NatureForm), differential gloss; the incorporation of aluminum oxide in the wearlayer (ScratchResist); and NatureForm Optix, an ultra-low gloss urethane with improved embossing in registration and use of digital imaging to perfect the visual.”

To achieve realistic simulations of various fashionable floors, Domco now blends different levels of embossing and texture within the wearlayer to partner with and enhance the printed designs, noted Stephan Guindon, vice president, sales and marketing for Domco.

“Take a ceramic tile-like pattern such as San Simeon in the Eloquence collection,” he pointed out. “By using our dimensional texturing process (combining a semi-gloss finish on the [printed] tile and a matte finish in the grout), the result is remarkably accurate when added to the crisp, three-dimensional printed tile image.”

“Going back 10 to 20 years,” said Liz Chabonneau, vice president of marketing for Congoleum, “resilient flooring either had a pvc wear surface or a pvc with a urethane coating on top. Traditionally, some of the biggest disadvantages with those surfaces was, they would scratch.

“When we introduced Ultima,” she explained, “what made that product so unique was that we created a wear surface. For sheet products we call it Ultra Shield. It is a patented wear surface that incorporates nylon and aluminum oxide together. It gives the floor an unmatched durability unlike anything out there because it’s scratch- and stain-resistant. In sheet flooring, we feature this surface on our Xclusive and Ultima lines, while on the tile side, we employ the same surface on our DuraStone and DuraCeramic lines. From a tradeup perspective, it’s at the upper end where we incorporate this surface.

“The second recent wear surface advancement we incoporated was the Scotchgard Protector into our Xclusive product,” she explained, “with its soil and stain repellancy. The consumer knows the Scotchgard name. It’s the number one name in terms of brand recognition among protectorants. So, these are two things we have on the Congoleum branded side which are firsts and cutting edge. On our K-Tech for Kitchen brand, we incorporated for the very first time in resilient flooring, silver in our wear surface that provides an antimicrobial protection to the product.”

Jacques Bourdeau, director of marketing for Tarkett, noted, “For our company, one of our main developments has been the TruTex technology, an innovative and patented embossing technique. It really brings the nature of wood, stone and other designs into the house. What it also does, it mimics as closely as possible natural materials. What TruTex provides is some realism in the design, especially when you look at the grout line. It eliminates the ‘plastic look’ in sheet vinyl grout lines.

“TruTex is also used in differential gloss levels, so it provides different gloss effects depending on the angles you look at the product,” he explained. “It really replicates the natural material. Many people think it’s just done on stone and slate looks, but you can also do it on wood designs as well. It emphasizes the graining on the wood design and really gives you something that is close to the real thing.”

Freedman agreed. “There have been great strides in making the products more realistic. Offering surface textures and graining that enhance the visuals without compromising performance. Also, surface coatings have been created and applied to reduce the amount of maintenance that is required.

“Today, the focus is on creating products that offer both aesthetic and maintenance values to the consumer,” he explained. “There is also a strong focus on the installation methods for each individual product either in training or products and adhesives developed for the changing demands of jobsite conditions. There are a wide array of choices available today that were not available just a few years ago.”

As Sheehan noted, “the consumer can identify with these advances in terms of:

• Improved stain resistance and cleanability;

• Improved realism and depth of design;

• Floors look newer longer;

• Improved stain resistance against asphalt tracking, and

• Realism – it’s difficult to discern the real thing from the NatureForm Optix resilient product.”
—Louis Iannaco