What flooring is the most cost-effective?

When buying flooring most people, even professionals in the building industry would consider three main factors; style, suitability and cost.

Style would include the texture, appearance and in general whether the product will fit in with the interior (or exterior) design.

Suitability is a more complex issue and professional advice is necessary. For example outdoor tiles in a cold climate need to be specified as frost resistant, flooring used in commercial spaces needs to be suitably wear resistant AC4 for laminated flooring, porcelains for tiles and so forth.

Cost may seem a simple issue but it gets complicated. The cost of a flooring system per square meter (or square foot) is just the first factor to consider. What about installation costs? What about the cost and effort of cleaning materials for the floor every year. And how long is this floor going to last until it needs replacement? Taking all these factors and more into consideration the Tile Council of North America commissioned Scharf-Godfrey to undertake what is called a  Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) for 17 different floor coverings. LCCA is defined as an economic method of project evaluation in which all costs arising from owning, operating, maintaining and disposing of a project are considered important to the decision.

Costs were amortized over the 40 year average lifetime of a building. The ratings in the table below take into account a multitude of factors and reduce them to a cost per area per year.

What you may find surprising is that ceramic and porcelain tiles are the most cost effective of all. This is not to say other flooring doesn’t have a place, just that for most applications ceramic tiles give the most bang for the buck! You may want to point this out to the next customer you serve.

More next time!

P.S. By the way VCT at the bottom of the table stands for Vinyl Composition Tile. It is a finished flooring material used primarily in commercial and institutional applications. VCT is composed of colored vinyl chips formed into solid sheets of varying thicknesses (4mm is common) by heat and pressure and cut into 30cm squares. Tiles are applied to a smooth, leveled sub-floor using a specially formulated vinyl adhesive that remains tacky but does not completely dry. Tiles are typically waxed and buffed using special materials and equipment.
VCT tiles have high resilience to abrasion and impact damage and can be repeatedly refinished with chemical strippers and mechanical buffing equipment. If properly installed, tiles can be easily removed and replaced when damaged. Tiles are available in a variety of colors from several major flooring manufacturers. Some manufacturers have created vinyl tiles that very closely resemble wood, stone terrazzo and concrete. Tiles can easily be cut and assembled into colorful and decorative patterns.
Vinyl composition tiles took the place of asbestos tiles, which were widely used in schools, hospitals, offices, and public buildings up until the 1980s. Use of tiles and adhesives containing asbestos were discontinued when asbestos materials were determined to be hazardous.