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Commercial sheet vinyl flooring is the sheet vinyl flooring using for commercial applications, such as school, hospital, factory, shopping mall, office, airport, station, library, exhibition centre, gym, etc.
It is mainly homogeneous vinyl sheet flooring and heterogeneous vinyl sheet flooring.
Nowadays, more and more people are using sheet vinyl flooring for commercial applications. But still not too many people knows how to select the perfect vinyl sheet flooring for their projects.
Today we will give you 8 tips on how to select commercial vinyl sheet flooring.
It’s an in-depth article that takes 20 minutes to read.
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It is so important that you the commercial sheet vinyl flooring can meet your target durability and life expectancy.
First of all, you will need to know where you want to install the commercial sheet vinyl: Library, factory, airport, station, hotel, shopping mall, hospital, school, or gym. Different traffic on the building will have different requirements on flooring durability.
For example, if you need the 20 years life expectancy of flooring for airport, you will sure need higher level of durability than the 20 years life expectancy in library, cause there are far more traffic in airport.
For heterogeneous flooring, the wear layer thickness and total thickness of commercial vinyl sheet flooring will make the difference on the flooring durability. The thicker the better.
Suggestion: wear layer thickness of 0.3mm, total thickness of 2mm can be ok for normally commercial grade vinyl sheet flooring. If there are high traffic, you can use wear layer from 0.5 to 0.7 mm, and total thickness from 2.5mm to 3mm.
For homogeneous flooring, normally 2mm thickness is good for commercial grade sheet vinyl flooring, in case you need better durability quality, you can increase the thickness to 2.5mm to 3mm.
Even though it is mainly glue down commercial vinyl sheet flooring, there are still some percentage with loose lay or peel & stick installation.
Loose lay and peel & stick commercial vinyl sheets are easier to install; these are perfect for sudden even, such as a temporary hospital, or temporary building for exhibition. It is easy to install and easy to remove.
While for regular commercial grade sheet vinyl flooring, we will need long life expectancy from 10 to 30 years, and it requires very good installation quality. In this case we will need to choose glue down in installation. We will also need to do self leveling if the subfloor is not flat enough for vinyl sheet rolls installation.
One thing very important is we will always need hot welding on the joints to make the installed PVC flooring rolls seamless and perfect to use. Cause only the seamless vinyl flooring sheets can be with 100% waterproof; and can guarantee antibacterial and fungicidal function.
When you are choosing your commercial sheet vinyl, you will need to list the top functions you need for your flooring.
Durability: thicker in wear layer and total thickness.
cushioned vinyl flooring: When you have a dancing room, the flooring you need is with higher resilience and comfort. So you will need to increase the total thickness, and it might be the choice if you choose the flooring with form as bottom layer. In this case you may able to choose the total thickness 4mm to 5mm. So it can protect you in dancing.
Fire resistance: even though all vinyl flooring is fire resistant, but if you need the flooring for fire station, then you may need the highest level of fire resistance.
Slip resistance: for hospital, health care center, or any other places that people will fall easily. The slip resistance function is essential. Please make sure all the flooring can reach slip resistance of R9, for some special places need high anti slip function, you may need R10 to R12 level of slip resistance.
Hospital grade vinyl sheet flooring: the flooring in hospital will need higher requirements on durability, antibacterial, fungicidal, fire resistant, and slip resistant, so please make sure this is in good quality.
Normally it will be bigger areas for commercial flooring, so it is very important that the cleaning and maintenance will be easy and fast.
Good quality rolled vinyl flooring should be able to do UV coating or PUR coating on the surface.
So it will be easier to clean and maintain, and the flooring can last longer.
Colors are always important for commercial vinyl sheet flooring. We should say before the users notice the quality of your vinyl flooring, what they first learn about the flooring is the color.
All commercial grade sheet vinyl flooring is patterned vinyl flooring. It will be either printed on heterogeneous vinyl flooring, or patterned design on homogeneous vinyl flooring.
Since it is only one single layer from top to bottom of homogeneous vinyl flooring, so can we cannot have printing layer for homogeneous flooring, but we are able to add color materials during the production process. And this will also help us to create different patterns on the homogeneous flooring.
For heterogeneous flooring, you will be able to choose luxury vinyl flooring. Cause all the colors are printed on the printing layer, and then laminate on the rolled vinyl flooring. Basically you can print any of the colors you want; no matter it is hardwood look, stone look, natural look, carpet look; or solid colors such as white, black, red etc. and custom printing for special project like kindergarten. So luxury sheet vinyl flooring can also be available in commercial flooring.
Of course the higher the quality, the better the vinyl sheets. But we also need to consider the budget. Of course we can choose 1mm wear layer and 5mm thickness, but we don’t really need to do it. It will be good for us to choose the rolled PVC flooring that can just meet our quality requirements, and it is a waste of money if it is over spec.
Another thing to lower down the cost is the brand. Currently not too many brands in commercial grade vinyl sheet flooring. Only a few PVC flooring roll suppliers in the world. So if you have a big project, we will suggest you buy from the factory directly. The price from named brands will be very high, while the cost from Chinese factories is much lower. More importantly, the quality from China PVC roll flooring factories is also very good. China is the biggest market in commercial vinyl sheet flooring, so we should be confident that the rolled vinyl flooring from these factories should be good enough. But if you really need the big brands, that’s fine you can go to Home Depot for it.
Normally both are good for all the commercial grade sheet vinyl flooring.
But it might be better if you use homogeneous flooring for higher traffic places, and the places high requirements in antibacterial and fungicidal.
And it is better if you use heterogeneous flooring for luxury vinyl floor, cushioned vinyl floor, and safety vinyl floor.
Here we want to list ESD vinyl sheet flooring out as the anti-static function is so important for some places. And actually some of the vinyl sheet flooring brands are specifically focus on ESD vinyl flooring only.
Clean room, telecommunication room, data center, operation room, high tech work shop, etc. All these kinds of places will need ESD safe flooring. The anti-static function will sure help to save lives and equipments.
But normally only homogeneous flooring can be with ESD vinyl flooring, while heterogeneous cannot.
So if you need anti static function, please make sure you choosing ESD vinyl flooring.
This article is written by Longda Flooring (www.longdaflooring.com), the largest vinyl sheet flooring manufacturer from China.
Please contact Longda flooring for a free quote on your vinyl flooring needs. We have quick response, efficient communication, quality products, on time delivery, and competitive price.
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