I was talking to a flooring salseman, mentioned the idea of cork for my office. He quickly suggested I'd want to use a floating floor so that damaged areas where the chair will go can be changed out.

Made me think perhaps cork isn't right for me, after all...

We have owned 2 homes with cork flooring, including our current one.

I wouldn't use cork in a dining room. The dents from the chairs will be a problem.

I have cork in my kitchen, dining room and living room. With felt pads on the chair legs, I don't notice any denting or other damage to the cork. The ONLY thing I've found that can damage my floor is my cat's rear claws when she's running and decides to change direction - scratches in the finish. It's the same with the hardwood on the steps, so I suspect any hard surface, except tile, would have the same problem.

I've been asking the same thing as I am thinking of doing cork in the new kitchen/dining. Like this thread I've been getting very mixed answers. Hopefully we get some more info :)

We have glue down cork that was coated with water based urethane on site. We only have it in our kitchen but we have our main dining table in there and it held up for 7 years before we recoated it (very easy by the way). We have hardwoods in the rest of the house and I found they held up about the same. The only difference being that we could redo the cork easily ourselves but now that the hardwood is starting to show some wear, it will be a huge job to redo.

I always thought dents were inevitable. Perhaps the difference of opinion arises from differences in cork quality?

Alice - You seem pretty happy. What brand cork?

Larry - have you found any flooring places locally that have cork? (I live in south bothell, I think you said you are in redmond)

I bought mine online from iFloor, but they have stores in the Seattle area:
http://www.ifloor.com/search/storelocator.pl
Carla in Sacramento

Mystery:
I have found cork at just about every flooring place. A very incomplete list includes Environmental Home Store (south central), iFloors.com (Tukwila), Great Floors (Renton), DeMar (Tukwila), Contract Furnishings Mart(south central), and Nielsen Bros (everywhere - they have nice floor installations).

:) Anywhere that is really knowledgeable? I've asked a few places and of course they go on and on about how great it is ... then I ask how many installations they have done and its usually: Oh well, one or two in the last year and before that none that I can remember.

Do they have a large selection (diff colors/styles)? I haven't visited any of the flooring places yet - still interviewing contractors and getting bids for the project as a whole. Contractors thus far have been in the "I haven't installed any cork but I hear good things about it" camp.

Found this article interesting... talks about the finishes of cork and the density and how the density of the cork makes a big difference on durability!

I am surprised none of the major cork online places talk about the density etc

When I was able to make a scratch mark across a cork sample with my fingernail I decided it wasn't all that durable even though the promos make is sound really great. Also, I don't think it looks all that attractive; reminds me of a subfloor, OSB sort of look. That is why we decided not to go with cork for my kitchen (went with porcelain and love it!). Am going to be doing a dining room in the near future and think wood will be the most elegant and durable finish there.
But to each, his own...go with what your heart desires!

I got some samples from DuroDesign in the mail on friday.. I took one of the sample and stuck it on the floor, took one of my kitchen chairs (since it has the smallest, pointiest contact with the floor of any of my chairs) and just wreaked havoc on the sample.

At first I was horrified - the sample was very badly dented and beat up. Then I checked it in a couple hours and you could see the main dent but it wasn't bad. Then the next morning... nothing... good as new - I even had some friends over and had them try to see where I'd really beat it up - no one could tell whatsoever.

I am ordering some samples from other places to see if its just the high density or the finish of the durodesign or if all cork could handle this abuse.

I also just received some DuroDesign samples that are currently sitting under the dining room table legs. Under each is a sample of tile (for the countertop.) Under the tile is a carpet (because that is what is on the floor now.) So far the cork doesn't show much. However, the table legs are square and about 2.5 inches on a side, so there is not a great deal of pressure anyway. I may have to work on some other torture test. Put it under the refrigerator?

The cork tiles do scratch easily, but I suspect that when four coats of urethane are applied this will become much less of an issue. Is this a reasonable expectation?

And don't depend on sales people. No one seems very knowledgeable about cork at all. Although cork has been around a long time, I suppose its currently popularity is too new for sales folks to have much experience with it.

We've had cork floors in our kitchen, dining room, foyer, bathroom for 18+ years. We love it! It has held up extremely well to all kinds of abuse.

Ours is a light grey/beige/white color. I've never noticed dents from furniture. It does scratch, but, the scratches are only noticeable if you get several inches from the floor and are looking for them. I see the scratches as the same kind of patina on my well loved old kitchen sink.

We're remodeling now and going to wood and tile only because we want to try a different look. I'm really glad that we chose a floating cork floor because we've been told that the glued down ones are very difficult to remove.

The floor will be removed in about a week. We've been surprised at how thin the layer of cork colored top material was in comparison to rest of tile.

We never got any care directions on the floor way back. So, it didn't receive any finish when new or throughout the years. I washed it like a vinyl floor. Probably good that it wasn't washed that much (never showed dirt) because water seeping it the seams cause some ridges to form.

I have a feeling that I'm really going to miss the old floor.

I installed a cork floor in the kitchen about 3 months ago. I am located in Portland and had difficulty finding an experienced installer. The 2 installers referred by the place I purchased the product were booked out for months. In order for the cork to be warrantied, it had to be installed according to instructions, which included each 12 x 12 tile having adhesive applied to it before being applied to the adhesive on the subfloor (this floor is not coming up in my lifetime). I went with an earnest, experienced guy who was willing to follow the instructions although he had never installed cork tiles. This way of installing the floor was very labor intensive. Not only that, but leveling and smoothing the floor was very labor intensive. The floor needs to be very smooth as well as level. In the end, the poor guy way underbid the job. He had a lot of integrity and we rewarded his commitment to do a good job. The floor looks and feels great. In spite of the research we did, I agree with everyone who spoke about conflicting information and people who repeat the buzz about cork, but know little about the individual products. Each product seems quite different. I did not know how difficult it would be to find someone to install the floor. Also, I was told that the UV cured wax tiles can be spot repaired, while the urethaned ones were not easily spot repaired. I don't know how reliable that information is. I was thrilled with the cork floor last week when I dropped one of my wine glasses and it literally bounced. If you are interested in the prefinished plank style, there is a restaurant here in Portland that has a Torlys cork floor - a lot of traffic, many chairs being moved and it looks terrific. Larryinseattle, I hope I get to hear what you choose.

Our contractor just finished installation of our cork floor in our kitchen today. He has been dubious about whether we should use the product from the beginning and made us very nervous. But since we had already purchased the cork flooring, we decided to go ahead with it. Also, because it's a floating floor, we figured that it would be easy to remove in a few years if it doesn't hold up.

So far my impressions are that it is very pretty and soft. However, floating really means floating. There are times when it feels like we might be sinking instead of floating. The subfloor was reasonably level, but it seems like there is a lot of movement in the tile.

Also be wary of purchasing from ifloor. Our contractor has found lots of dings and dents in the planks of cork. Luckily we bought enough that he can trim the dinged pieces for small pieces to fit around doors, cabinets, etc.

We're hoping to be finished with our kitchen in the next week or so and I'll be posting photos so you can see it. It looks great, but I can't tell yet what kind of abuse it will handle.

I seriously considered cork flooring when planning my kitchen remodel a couple of years ago; it was beautiful, and promised to be kind to my old feet & legs. The two things that finally decided me to go with laminate were reports of the need to periodically re-seal the floor, and even more discouragingly, the probability that sunlight would lighten the parts of the floor exposed to it. I'm happy with my laminate flooring, but on the chance that I live long enough to think of replacing it, what reassurances can anyone offer me on these two potential problems with cork flooring? (Don't mean to highjack the thread, but this seemed to be an appropriate place to ask.)

---Margaret

I would really like to know what type of cork lkremodel has. We did another modest torture test on the DuroDesign samples. This time they sat on top of vinyl and underneath a small (3-ft square) card table with 1-inch square wooden legs. Not a heavy load - just some accumulated junk such as mail, cook books and the occasional elbow. The expected dents showed up after a day. But even after three days, they were quite noticeable - although diminished. They almost looked like surface cracks. Dear Wife freaked out. Too much "patina." It does bode ill for a dining room.

DuroDesign is just cork with a patterned top. But what about Wicanders? I haven't been able to get a sample. Does the ceramic top layer help a lot? Does it make it less comfortable?

We have Wicanders series 1000 (floating floor with a vinyl finish) in the kitchen, installed three months. We got samples from floormall.com, although we ordered locally in the end.

The vinyl coating feels really strong, but I haven't tried to scratch it like a chair might. The 100 series is a urethane coating similar to a wood floor finish. And they have both finishes in glue-down tiles too.

FYI, we didn't like the vinyl finish as much when we saw it in the store (the cork didn't look as "real") but we didn't see the difference as much once we got samples at home. So we went with the vinyl because it seems better, at least for a kitchen.

I got a sample from ifloor and the finish is clearly inferior to DuroDesign. First off it has kind of a haze to it so it doesn't look quite as nice but worse was when you dent it the finish got small cracks - the cork recovered from the dents like the DuroDesign but the small cracks in the finish remained. It was similar to the durodesign in that it was one type of cork (the standard that looks like bulletin boards) and then a very thin layer of the actual cork you see on top.

Sorry I don't know the brand/make of my 18+ year old floor. It was the only cork product we saw in Madison, WI at that time. It came from a higher end flooring place and came in two colors: light and dark. It was quite expensive at the time, too.

I can't remember breaking anything dropped on that floor. A couple of times sharp knives stuck into the floor like what you might see if a knife was thrown at a target.

I'm getting ready to lose a lot of dishes, glasses with the next floor.

My cork is Natural Cork. I ordered samples online - sorry I don't remember where, but probably from their website, which you can find with Google. I do love the floor! If my kitchen chairs leave any indentations I haven't noticed.

Our cork is Eurocork plank (floating floor) which we bought on ebay for around $4. sq ft. We've had it in LR and DR for over a year, with NO permanent dents, NO scratches, easy to damp-mop clean: it's self-healing. It feels so nice on bare feet, warmer than hardwood. And it's beautiful. Looks to me like a forest floor. I was worried that the swirly design might be to0 loud/strong, but once we got it down, the natural shades blended with everything, and that hasn't been an issue. It was pretty fast to install, once we figured out how the planks snap together. It's provided us with some needed sound insulation, too, so we don't hear what's going on downstairs so easily. We like it so much it's going into the kitchen next!

This link shows what it looks like, but we didn't purchase from here: