The 10 Best Floor Machines

There are myriad different types of flooring an architect, designer, or homeowner can choose to install in a facility or residence, and every type of floor has many positive attributes offset by a negative or two (or more). Whether you are designing a building from the ground up or you are considering a renovation to a single existing room, it's important that you take the time to think through each type of flooring available in terms of aesthetics, durability, ease of cleaning, and cost of installation, maintenance, and repairs.

Let's spend a moment taking a look at a few of the major types of flooring you will find in offices, hotels, homes, and more.

Tile is both one of the most ancient building materials known to mankind and one of the most durable, versatile, and overall excellent materials still in use. The great versatility of tile helps to explain its lasting popularity -- tile can look like wood, stone, or terra-cotta, it can be colored and decorative or simple and demure. Tile is durable and mosts types resist staining and are easy to clean. However, it can be an expensive material, and when cracked or otherwise damaged, the process of replacing the compromised tile can be laborious, especially if the specific type of tile used was rare to begin with or has since become scarce.

Hardwood is another timeless flooring (and general building) material that remains as popular as ever. When properly sealed and treated, wood is relatively durable and can easily be kept clean with regular maintenance. Many wood types are affordable, but many woods are also not rugged enough for very high traffic areas, such as lobbies, office hallways, schools, and other institutions.

Stone floors, often made of marble, granite, or slate, are elegant and lovely. They add style and gravitas to any room, and by their very nature are built to last. Stone is hard to damage, easy to clean, but can be very expensive, often out of the price range of the homeowner or smaller business.

Linoleum is not exactly an elegant flooring solution, but it just might be the perfect choice for rooms like a commercial kitchen or a school bathroom -- in other words, it's a good choice for places where messes may happen. That's true based both on this synthetic material's ability to resist stains, and because it can usually be removed and replaced at relatively low cost. Note that while the term linoleum is still in common usage, when people use the word, they are more often referring to the material that has largely succeeded it, which is polyvinyl chloride, better known as PVC.

Polished concrete is a relative newcomer to the flooring industry, but is now making rapid inroads into upscale interior design. While concrete floors have long been used in factories and warehouses, new high quality, high shine concrete floors treated with "densifiers" are now seen in condos, luxury lofts, and more. Finely polished concrete resembles stone more than the simple building material it really is, and the cleaner you keep it, the better it looks.

Carpet is affordable, available in countless colors and styles, and is relatively easy to remove and/or replace as needed. It's not that easy to keep clean, however, unless you have the right equipment for the job and you are willing to put in the time to clean it, or else the cash to hire professionals to do the maintenance for you.