Say Goodbye to Cold & Noisy Wood Floors

Wood flooring has always been popular, with businesses and regular homeowners. It offers style, sophistication, and a classic sense of elegance that is hard to get anywhere else. Yet, in the past, wood has also suffered from a few prominent downsides. For example, old fashioned wood flooring gained a reputation for being both cold and noisy.
The good news is that things have changed. The materials and manufacturing techniques used to create wood flooring in Bury St Edmunds have improved massively over the last two decades. These days, modern wood floors are every bit as practical as they are stylish. They come with impenetrable seals, resilient surfaces, and luxury cushioned foundations.
This guide to the benefits of wood flooring will explain why this material is now the perfect choice for commercial environments.

The Evolution of Wood Flooring

The misconception that wooden floors are cold and noisy dates back to a time when older designs featured less reliable seals between individual boards. Also, it’s as simple as the fact that they used to be common in large, badly insulated properties. When put up against draughty cellars, coal fires, and insulation free walls, old fashioned wood floors often turned out to be poor heat preservers.
However, in today’s world, with our heavily insulated walls and state of the art designs, wood flooring in Bury St Edmunds is not just great a retaining heat, it is moisture and stain resistant too. When it comes to offices and other commercial environments, it represents a low maintenance and highly cost effective option.

Guaranteed Warmth and Noise Control

If you shop carefully and take the time to pick a wood floor that’s right for your business, you’ll find that it is warm, quiet, and comfortable to walk on. Modern choices now come with tight fitting tongue and groove seals that are impervious to gaps and shrinkage. This means that draughts are a thing of the past; your workplace will be as plush and homely as it is durable.
If you operate a commercial environment that sees a lot of foot traffic, you can invest in top quality underlay. This will further increase sound absorption and keep the space calm and quiet, no matter how many people are using it. The choice of underlay will depend on the type of wood flooring that you opt for and how much you want to spend; there are products out there to suit all kinds of budget.

Choosing the Right Underlay for Wood Floors

The main choices, when it comes to sound absorbing underlay, are underlay boards, synthetic foam, and adhesive underlay. You can also invest in specialist sound deadening underlay, but this is only really necessary in environments that require total silence (libraries, for example). While synthetic foam is the cheapest and most popular choice, it is only effective on the smoothest of surfaces.
If you are planning to install underlay on an uneven surface, boards are a better choice. Polystyrene and closed cell polypropylene are the most common materials, because they offer superior levelling, thermal and sound reducing qualities. Fibreboards made out of recycled materials are very cheap, but they absorb moisture fast; do not install these unless you have a high quality wood floor with an impenetrable seal.