FINISH FLOORING

Functions of Finish Flooring

Floors have a lot to do with our visual and tactile appreciation of a building. We sense their colors, patterns, and textures, their “feel” underfoot, and the noises they make in response to footsteps. Floors affect the acoustics of a room, contributing to a noisy quality or a hushed quality, depending on whether a hard or soft flooring material is used. Floors also interact in various ways with light: Some floor materials give mirrorlike reflections; others give diffuse reflections or none at all. Dark flooring materials absorb most of the light incident upon them and contribute to the creation of a darker room, whereas light materials reflect most incident light and help create a brighter room.

Floors are also a major functional component of a building. They are its primary wearing surfaces, subject to water, grit, dust, and the abrasive and penetrating actions of feet and furniture. They require more cleaning and maintenance effort than any other component of a building. They must be designed to deal with problems of skid resistance, sanitation, noise reduction between floors of a building, and even electrical conductivity in occupancies such as computer rooms and hospital operating rooms, where static electricity would pose a threat. And like other interior finish components, floors must be selected with an eye to combustibility, fire resistance ratings, and the structural loads that they will place on the frame of the building.