Kitchens are at the heart of Aussie households. With kids searching the fridge at all hours of the day, Dad turning into a chef at the stovetop at night, and Mum packing lunches in the morning before kissing everybody goodbye for the day, our kitchens experience a large volume of foot traffic from sunup to sundown.
Further to this, the kitchen is a place that is prone to getting wet – particularly when the little ones try and help with the dishes – and, with the oven and stovetop blazing away, they’re exposed to heat on a regular basis, especially when you’re in the mood for a midweek Sunday roast.
These factors make it necessary that we have in our kitchens a versatile and high-performing floor that can meet the needs and demands of the modern Australian family.
In this article, we give you a rundown on the top floors for Aussie kitchens, so you can get back to making cheese-and-bickie platters for your friends and stop worrying about which one you should have installed in your house.
Low Maintenance
When it comes to the kitchen, you want to spend more time making a mess than you do cleaning it up, which is why the most formidable kitchen floor is one that is a breeze to clean.
When you drop bread crumbs or spill the cake mix or slosh dishwater over the sink, it shouldn’t take more than a sweep or a spot clean to bring the floor up to sparkling new.
Kitchens shouldn’t take much effort in the upkeep department. For this reason, it’s important that you select a floor that can be easily cleaned.
Our recommendations for low maintenance floors:
· Tiles
· Porcelains
· Vinyls
Each of these options rank highly on the maintenance ladder, making it super easy for you to clean up any accidents that might happen in the kitchen and to wipe up liquid spills in no time at all.
Cost-effectiveness
It’s true. You shouldn’t skimp on a kitchen by purchasing a floor that’s cheap, inferior and unlikely to stand up to the pressures of everyday life in the modern Australian household.
Kitchens are vital to the operation of a household and will likely experience more use than any other space in your house, so you should pick a floor that’s in it for the long run.
This might mean you’ll have to fork out a little more than you’d like, but it doesn’t mean you need to blow your budget either.
If you get wise with your money, you can purchase a floor that is not only perfectly suited to the kitchen environment, but also one that is cost-effective and won’t leave you scraping up pennies to buy your next meal.
Our recommendation for the most affordable, high-performance floors are:
· Laminates
· Vinyls
· Tiles
These recommendations offer you the most bang for your buck. They are a hell of a lot cheaper than natural stone and classic hardwoods, yet they are still highly durable and can persevere in a kitchen climate, making them a wise investment both in the short-term and long-term.
Appearance
The way your kitchen looks matters, if not to you then to the people who pay you a visit (even though they might say it doesn’t).
You’ll be spending a lot of time there, so you’ll want your kitchen to be visually appealing. Whether you’re after a simplistic, understated look that exudes homeliness or an uptown look that gives off an atmosphere of eminence and luxury, your floor will have the final say in your kitchen’s appearance.
The following floors rank highest in terms of looks:
· Natural stone floors (such as marble and slate)
· Natural timbers and hardwoods
Nothing can surpass the opulence of a natural stone floor, nor the ageless appeal of a classic hardwood. They are unbeatable in terms of their visual appeal. The only problem is that such floors come with hefty price tags.
But don’t lose hope just yet. If you can’t afford to pay for these trendy floors, you can still opt for lookalike laminate floors, which do a most authentic imitation of their natural counterparts, but at a fraction of the price. This means you can have the upmarket look you’ve always wanted for your kitchen at downmarket prices. It’s a win win for everybody!
Durability
Finally, you want to select a floor that’s in it for the long haul.
You will have people trumping over your kitchen floor for years to come. It will see its fair share of accidents with heat, stains and spills.
And it’s highly likely it will face the challenge of resisting water absorption on a regular basis.
For this reason, you want a kitchen floor that can host a kitchen environment for many years, such as the Swiss Krono AquaStop, which is a hardy laminate flooring model designed specifically to withstand spills and water damage, making it an ideal surface to have under your feet in kitchen environments.
Of course, all floors can have healthy lifespans and receive high marks in the durability department if they’re treated, sealed, and maintained in a proper fashion.
However, you’ll want a floor that is not only durable, but low maintenance as well (as we mentioned earlier.) For this reason, we recommend the following floors in terms of durability and gumption:
· Tiles
· Laminates
· Vinyls
· Natural stone (if sealed and treated properly)
These are the hardest floors you’ll find on the market, and the ones that best handle the heat (and wet!) when it comes to the kitchen.
It should also be pointed out that durability pertains not only to the potential lifespan of a product, but also the ease with which it can be replaced should it become damaged.
A big bonus to laminate floors when it comes to this is that you can pry up individual planks and replace them separately should the need ever arise.
Make sure when you invest in a floor you not only consider its durability and lifespan, but the simplicity with which it can be repaired and the cost of those reparations. This might inflate the overall cost of your product when you think about the pricing of future maintenance and replacements.
The Verdict
You can optimise the best possible outcome for your kitchen if you take the factors outlined above into account when purchasing your new floor.
If you have money to spare, natural stone floors are a great option, but our personal favourite is probably laminate floors or tiles. These materials are highly suited to the kitchen environment, but are available at much cheaper prices.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, you need to personalise your kitchen floor to suit your needs, tastes and budget.
Now that you know what you need to do… go forth, get your kitchen floor, and get back to making memories and beautiful food!