/ Home & Garden

10:53 AM PST on Wednesday, February 11, 2004

By Helen Bond / Special Contributor

No matter how you lay it, the right flooring can add spice to any kitchen. And these days there are more choices than ever.

Evans Caglage / DMN The ToughGuard Crocodile design in vinyl in Armstrong's new Solarian Urban Settings line is inspired by the colors and textures of animal skins.

Think exotic, practical and even Earth-friendly. But don't do anything until you think about how you are going to use the space.

"A kitchen floor is an extremely important choice in a home," says Ann Sacks, chief creative officer of Ann Sacks Tile & Stone. "The floor needs to look fabulous but should function appropriately for what you intend to throw its way."

The wrong floor choice can show dirt or won't bear the brunt of a busy family. The right choice helps determine the overall appeal of the kitchen. The good news is that you can have both style and practicality. As with any remodeling project, costs vary, depending on size, materials and ease of installation.

What's underfoot in flooring? We're here to help.

What's new: Mother Nature

Look for ecologically friendly bamboo and cork.

Bamboo is cut, sliced into long strips and formed into planks. "Bamboo flooring has been around for years but is now a hot trend on the West Coast," says Dee Logan, ASID, of Dee Logan Designs. "With the popular clean and simple Asian style, bamboo looks terrific, subtly showing the distinctive joints of the stalk."

Bamboo comes in its natural color and a darker, caramel version. The material is naturally oily and doesn't take a stain. Heating the bamboo, a process called carbonizing or caramelizing, creates the darker version, says Brian Frailey, showroom manager of ProSource Wholesale Floorcoverings.

Evans Caglage / DMN Cork is hip, durable and environmentally friendly. It is soft, dent-resistant and muffles sound.

Bamboo, at $4 to $8 per square foot, is durable – harder than cherry or oak – and a good choice to resist scuffing, staining and water damage.

Cork is another natural product that is emerging beyond commercial installation for use in the home. Not your child's bulletin-board variety, cork used as flooring surface is the bark of the cork oak, a tree from the beech family. The bark is peeled without destroying the tree, and it grows back within nine years to be harvested again.

As kitchen flooring, cork insulates sounds and is warm, resilient and a natural fire retardant, says Ms. Logan. It's available in about 15 colors and different textural qualities, and it's easy to install and seal with polyurethane for about $3 to $8 per foot.

The great pretenders

If your spouse wants the sophistication of stone but you prefer function over form, consider a laminate that looks like stone but holds up to everyday wear and tear. It's part of the new wave of flooring options that mimic wood planks, stone and ceramic tiles.

Armstrong's new Urban Settings line features vinyl designs inspired by the exotic colors and textures of animal skins. The crocodile pattern, offered in six colors at about $3 per square foot, looks like leather but is resistant to tears, rips and gouges.

Nafco handcrafts its vinyl planks to imitate ash, elm, chestnut, maple and a variety of oaks. Cost ranges from $2 to $6 per square foot.

Solid beauty

Evans Caglage / DMN Porcelain doesn't absorb stains, is scratch resistant, durable and easy to clean.

Ceramic tile and stone offer beautiful floor alternatives. Popular kitchen floor stones include granite, marble and slate. Prepare to spend $7 to $100 per square foot.

Ann Sacks' antique terra cotta, at about $6 to $15 per square foot, is a showstopper.

And concrete isn't just for the driveway. Add color and finish and you've got flooring – for the right home. A note of caution: It requires a sealer to avoid staining. And it runs on the expensive side, about $15 to $20 per square foot.

Stone, tile and concrete work best with a radiant heat system. Beware: These surfaces can be hard, cold and noisy. You drop something and it's gone.

Another drawback to harder floors: You'll feel it in your back if you stay on your feet too long. Both Ms. Sacks and Ms. Logan recommend an easy-care area rug or mat in work areas.

"I use a thick, cotton woven rug that is reversible," says Ms. Logan. "If company is coming, I flip it over to the 'new' side."

Easy as 1, 2, 3

The big news in flooring for do-it-yourselfers is the growing availability of glueless flooring systems for laminate, wood planks, parquet and other surfaces. Most major manufacturers of laminates offer some type of interlocking system for both the do-it-yourself market and specialty retailers. Interlocking edges click into place, doing away with the need to glue or clamp the pieces together. Relatively easy to install, the system cuts costs and time and avoids messy cleanup.

Pergo Presto's interlocking planks are engineered to snap together into tight-fitting joints. The only tools required other than a saw and hammer are a tapping block and pull bar, which Pergo offers as an installation accessory.

New standbys

When selecting kitchen flooring, don't forget to consider adjacent areas. While there are no set rules these days, it is helpful to choose materials that allow the kitchen to flow into connecting rooms. If you have an oak floor that prominently joins the kitchen, for instance, select a ceramic glaze for your stone floor that picks up the pink, yellow or brown tones of the wood. Or if you have a deeper wood finish in the family room but prefer a lighter wood in the kitchen, carry over the darker wood as a border for the lighter wood.

Helen Bond is a free-lance writer for The Dallas Morning News.