Resilient flooring for the bathroom and kitchen has come a long way since the vinyl asbestos containing floor tiles of the mid 1900’s or the thin, brittle sheet vinyl flooring of the 1970’s. Today you have many different choices of quality resilient vinyl floor materials for the bathroom, kitchen and other rooms with several other flooring options constructed from natural materials such as cork or linoleum.
What these new materials all have in common however, is their ability to provide a cleanable, comfortable and attractive floor for your bathrooms, kitchen, foyer, recreation room, mudroom or laundry or any other room where you need an easily cleanable floor. Some of the products can be installed by a home repair weekend warrior, but other flooring such as sheet vinyl are more difficult to install requiring more experienced DIYer and as with sheet linoleum, even professional installation.
Resilient flooring comes in three basic categories:
- Sheet goods (requires difficult cutting and fitting)
- Tiles (provides easier cutting and fitting)
- Planks (provides easier cutting and fitting)
- Self-stick (adhesive backed flooring)
- Floating floor (interlocking planks)
- Loose-lay (taped at seams)
- Glue-down (adhesive applied to floor)
The resilient floors we will review, most of which are great picks for kitchen or bathroom flooring are as follows. I’ve listed them by type, generally from the easiest to most difficult to install.
- Tiled: Vinyl Tile Floors (self-stick)
- Planked: Vinyl Plank Flooring (self-stick)
- Planked: Cork Plank Flooring (interlocking)
- Planked: Linoleum Plank Floor (interlocking)
- Tiled: Vinyl Tile Flooring (glue-down)
- Tiled: Linoleum Tile Floor (glue-down)
- Rolled: Sheet Vinyl Flooring (loose lay or glue down)
- Rolled: Sheet Linoleum Floor (glue-down; professional installation)
