Karndean has carved out a niche for making supreme quality flooring. Its multi-layer vinyl tiles can be fit on practically any flat surface, and can replace stone, porcelain, concrete, wood and laminate as far as visual effect is concerned. But it also comes with a host of benefits beyond the aesthetic. Let’s take a look at Karndean flooring, where it can be used and how to look after it.
How much Karndean flooring costs
Kardean flooring costs around the £80-£110 mark per square peter to buy, and around £15-£40 per square meter to install.
What are Karndean tiles made of?
Karndean produces three ranges of floor tiles, each with its own qualities and manufacture. Let’s look at them in turn.
Glue down flooring
Karndean’s glue down flooring is its largest collection. It features tiles that sit flush together along their straight edges, but because there’s no form of physical interlocking, they are glued down with a special adhesive. That means the floor needs to be very flat and smooth.
Because there’s no locking mechanism, the sky’s the limit when it comes to shapes. They produce various rectangles, squares, triangles, hexagons, herringbones, rhombuses and what they call “Pennon”, a chevron shape that gives the illusion of 3D cubes.
The glue down range uses two layers of backing made of a blend of limestone and PVC, followed by a high definition photo layer, then a transparent wear layer and finally a polyurethane protective coating. In some products, the wear layer is thickened to allow texture to be applied, such as wood grain or stone roughness, for added look and feel realism.
LooseLay
With Karndean LooseLay flooring, the tiles interlock in the same way, but don’t need to be glued down. Instead they have a soft slip-resistant undercoating, which has a waveform to maximise grip on the floor. Because the tiles sit flush with each other, there’s nowhere to slip anyway, particularly as a tiled room normally goes from wall to wall, with thresholds and T-bars holding them in place. (Unlike laminates, loose lay tiles don’t need an expansion gap around the edge – you press them right against the skirting board or wall.)
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The big advantages with LooseLay are that it’s quicker and less messy than glueing, you can easily lift the tiles if you make a mistake or change your mind, and you can get away with a less than perfectly smooth floor underneath.
Rigid core
This is as close as Karndean gets to laminate flooring. It’s a rigid tile with tongues and grooves along the edges so they interlock. Once a floor has been put down, it’s effectively one piece, giving exceptional stability.
The construction is slightly different, with six layers. The layer touching the floor is a special acoustic backing, which deadens sounds from above and below. Next is the interlocking mechanism layer, followed by a stability layer, and the final three are the same photographic, wear and protective layers as the other tiles.
Karndean’s ranges
Karndean has 12 ranges to choose from:
Art Select
Wood and stone ranges, for classic flooring styles, from slate to parquet.
Da Vinci
Traditional natural materials imitated beautifully with a touch of contemporary taste.
Michelangelo
Mesmerizing patterns that mimic mottled stones like quartz, but also mini-tile mosaics.
Van Gogh
Pushing timber a little further, with distressed wood looks, purposely mismatched colours and reclaimed wood vibes.
Opus
Fresh and modern plank and tile finishes, with some interesting shapes thrown in.
Knight Tile
A bright collection of slates, limestones, painted wood and pines.
Kaleidoscope
For those with bags of imagination and a love of statement flooring, Kaleidoscope gives you plenty of shapes and shades to play with.
Heritage Collection
Inspired by intricate Victorian tiling patterns, the Heritage Collection is made for hallways, bathrooms and kitchens.
Karndean LooseLay
Easy-install tiles that require no glueing.
LooseLay Longboard
Floorboard-look tiles from the LooseLay range.
Korlok
Interlocking floor tiles with tongue and groove dry joins for rigidity.
Palio Clic
A range of tongue and groove stone and wood effect tiles that require no glueing.
Benefits of Karndean
Karndean flooring gives you all the aesthetic qualities of stone, wood and tile but with several advantages over each. It’s not as cold underfoot as stone and tile, and allows under-floor heating to be installed (maximum 27 °C). Compared with solid wood and engineered wood flooring, it’s much more water-resistant, so can be used in bathrooms, kitchens, utility rooms and hallways without fear of warping and staining. Over laminate flooring, the main advantage is that it doesn’t expand and shrink with temperature changes. That means you don’t need to leave a 10 mm gap around the edge, so you can have a clean edge with no need for edging pieces.
Although it’s a premium product and not cheap, it can work out less expensive than many natural products, and as it’s much easier to shape around irregular features (you just cut it with a knife), labour costs are minimised compared to the costs of shaping stone, porcelain and timber.
How to clean Karndean flooring
Karndean flooring is simple to clean. The company sells its own cleaning kits, which contain all you need to care for the floor, but you can keep it clean with water and small amounts of detergent.
First, using a soft-bristled brush, sweep away the inevitable dust that has accumulated. Then, fill a bucket with water, add a small amount of detergent, and mop the floor clean. Don’t walk on it while it’s drying or you’ll get marks on it and you’ll need to wash it all over again.
Looking after the floor
Although the top coating is tough, you can still scratch and scuff the surface if hard and sharp objects come into contact with it. Follow these tips to prolong your floor’s life:
- Put soft pads under chair and table legs.
- Lift and move furniture – don’t drag it.
- Place a doormat near the external doors and wipe your feet when you enter.
- Wipe off any spillages immediately.
- Clean the floor with a mop at least once a week.