If you are looking for a gorgeous, durable, yet eco-conscious flooring option for your kitchen, cork is an excellent choice.  It can be used as a subflooring option to add cushion underneath your tile or hardwood, or can be installed as the flooring itself. 

Keeping your kitchen green

Cork flooring is made by harvesting the bark of the cork oak tree, leaving the tree intact, and making it a highly renewable resource.  In fact, the cork used for flooring is made from the waste in the manufacturing process of bottle corks, so it is also a recycled product. Cork is naturally bug, mildew and mold resistant, unlike many other hardwoods, keeping the air in your kitchen fresh and clean. Being an excellent thermal insulator,  cork not only reduces your kitchen’s heat loss during the winter time, but makes your floors much more comfortable to walk on in cold weather.

Durability

Because of it’s natural “air” pockets, cork has an almost cushiony quality, making it much easier to stand on for extended periods of time when cooking or cleaning in your kitchen.  This same quality also makes the floor durable, as cork has the ability to compress and then recover it’s shape after being dented by heavy appliances or high heeled shoes, unlike normal hardwood floors. Since it isn’t as hard as other traditional kitchen floors, dropped dishes will also have less tendency to break.  Now how great is that?

Not only is cork an eco conscious and durable option for your kitchen floor, it is also quite attractive. It comes in a wide variety of natural colors and can also be colored by manufacturers making your design possibilities endless. It can be made into tiles, with amazing design detail and colors, or into slats like a normal hardwood floor, for a more understated natural look.  Either way, you will most certainly have a beautiful, environmentally friendly, kitchen floor for many years to come.

All pictures courtesy of Globus Cork- www.corkfloor.com