The flooring choice in commercial food premises, such as restaurants and cafes, is essential. But with many considerations and flooring options, how do you choose the best flooring? This guide covers how you can select the best flooring for restaurants and cafes.
Discover how the right flooring can benefit your business
Considerations for Choosing Restaurant Flooring
Some factors should be considered when choosing a suitable flooring for a café or restaurant environment. Some factors are essential for high-traffic areas, such as kitchens and walkways, while others reflect your business and the atmosphere you want to create.
Health and Safety
There are many health and safety aspects that a restaurant or café needs to adhere to. Part of this will include choosing a suitable flooring that minimises the risk of slip and fall hazards. Spillages and breakages are a likely occurrence in such areas, requiring flooring that minimises risks.
Hygiene is also a crucial health and safety factor in food establishments. As such, the floors need to be reflective of high hygiene standards. A flooring that is easy to clean and maintain is much more suitable for a restaurant or café while also standing up to the high foot traffic.
The health and safety considerations of flooring must extend to both kitchen and food preparation areas, alongside lounge or dining areas. These high-traffic areas will have their own hygiene and cleaning requirements and require a suitable flooring solution.
Comfort
Comfort is a significant part of the ambience in any restaurant or café. While cleanliness may be a top priority, so too is comfort. Alongside furniture, the flooring choice can go a long way to providing a comfortable environment.
Good quality flooring can provide comfort underfoot and minimise the noise. Restaurants and cafes can be noisy environments, especially where kitchens are concerned. The right flooring choice can provide soundproofing abilities that reduce noise levels.
Underfoot comfort is another factor that should be considered. A more comfortable flooring choice underfoot helps improve overall comfort. Also, staff who spend long periods standing and waiting on tables will prefer soft or comfortable flooring underfoot.
Durability
Restaurants and cafes are incredibly busy environments, particularly kitchen areas. Flooring in these environments will experience a lot of wear and tear. Moving equipment, spillages, pulling chairs in and out, excessive footfall. Restaurant flooring needs to withstand a lot.
That’s why choosing a durable flooring option that can withstand excessive wear and tear is essential. Not only will investing in quality, durable flooring look good, but it will also be a worthwhile long-term investment.
Choosing flooring that shows excessive wear and tear will reflect poorly on your business image. You’ll also be investing more money to maintain or improve the look of degraded flooring. This will only lead to replacing the flooring sooner rather than later (not to mention the safety hazards).
Aesthetics
The aesthetics of the flooring is another factor to consider when choosing restaurant flooring. Not only does the choice of flooring need to serve its functional purpose, but it also needs to provide an aesthetic appeal to your customers. The flooring choice forms a vital part of your restaurant’s interior design. The better the aesthetics, the better the dining experience.
Budget
One more consideration for choosing a restaurant flooring is budget. Each flooring option will have a different cost, some considerably more than others. You must consider your budget carefully when choosing a suitable flooring option for a restaurant or café.
The price of installing and maintaining flooring may also significantly differ depending on your choice. Some floors are much easier to clean than others, which can mean a big difference in cleaning and maintenance costs.
When choosing your flooring, you should try to balance cost, durability, aesthetics, and whether the flooring is a good fit for your business. The long-term cost of flooring should also be considered in your budget.
Choice of flooring for restaurants and cafes
Alongside the considerations above for choosing restaurant flooring, there are different types. There are several options you can select, each offering different characteristics, aesthetic appeal, and benefits. Here is an overview of the choice of flooring for restaurants and cafés.
Commercial vinyl
A popular flooring option is commercial vinyl. Made using natural and synthetic materials, commercial vinyl flooring is ideal for kitchen areas. It is also much thicker than domestic vinyl, ideal for busy commercial environments.
Commercial vinyl offers several benefits, making it an ideal choice for kitchen areas. Firstly, due to its manufacturing process, commercial vinyl is a durable solid floor that can withstand heavy usage. It’s also easy to clean and maintain while coming in various design choices.
Slip-resistance vinyl options are also available, helping to minimise the risk of slips and falls.
Luxury vinyl tiles
Luxury vinyl tiles (LVT) is another great flooring choice for restaurants and cafes. LVT is a unique flooring that offers luxury and elegance. Unlike commercial vinyl, luxury vinyl offers an elegant flooring choice that is ideal for dining areas in a restaurant.
LVT uses several layers: a backing layer at the bottom, a thick rigid core layer, and a top protective layer. The rigid core layer comes in a variety of thicknesses and this will affect the durability. The top protective layers minimise damage from scratches.
LVT is an ideal choice of flooring for dining areas in restaurants due to the great benefits this flooring provides:
- Natural looking design
- Easy to clean and maintain
- Water-resistant properties
- Durable
- Soundproofing abilities
- Soft underfoot
Carpet tiles
Carpet tiles can also be a great flooring choice for restaurants and cafes. While this may be a flooring option many may not associate with use in restaurants and cafes, there are still some benefits why you should consider it.
Prevalent in commercial environments, such as offices, carpet tiles have boomed in recent years. It’s also fast becoming a popular home flooring option too. Unlike traditional broadloom carpets, carpet tiles come in varying sizes that effortlessly blend and can create unique flooring patterns.
The biggest reason carpet tiles are an ideal flooring choice in restaurants and cafes is their durability. Carpet tiles are widely used in heavy footfall environments, such as schools, and can withstand much usage before wearing.
While carpet tiles are more susceptible to stains, they are still resilient against dirt. If any tiles become damaged, replacing them with a new carpet tile is easy. Cleaning is also easy and typically only requires vacuuming. Deep cleaning may only be needed once every couple of years.
Versatility and cost-effectiveness are also big selling points of carpet tiles in restaurants and cafes. Given the durability of carpet tiles, they can be a much better investment compared to other flooring options, helping you save in the long term. With so many design choices, you can easily create a unique flooring design to suit your interior design needs.
Linoleum
The last flooring type we will cover for restaurants and cafes is linoleum. Linoleum is a popular choice in kitchens due to its water-proofing abilities. Linoleum is a flooring made from mixing various natural materials, including linseed oil, wood flour and jute.
While linoleum looks similar to vinyl, it has some noticeable differences that make it stand out. Vinyl is made purely from synthetic materials and only has the design printed on the top layer. Linoleum is a purely natural flooring with a design that is solid throughout.
While vinyl flooring has greater design flexibility, linoleum has some significant benefits over vinyl. The biggest difference is durability. Linoleum is a highly durable flooring that makes it ideal for use in busy kitchens.
Unlike other manufactured flooring, linoleum doesn’t emit any volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Cleaning and maintenance are also effortless, only requiring sweeping and mopping. As linoleum is made entirely from natural and renewable materials, it is biodegradable and environmentally friendly.
Choosing the right flooring for a restaurant or café can be difficult. Exploring the needs and requirements of your business, alongside the benefits each flooring type offers, will help make the decision easier.
Find out about the retail flooring services E&M Services provides