Are Cork Floors Good for Bathrooms?
Many people like the new, modern cork flooring solutions. Some of them use such floors to put them on the walls of the rooms. Some others would love to have them everywhere in their home, but there’s a question if cork floors are suitable for bathrooms or not.
If you want to install a cork floor in your bathroom, you should be aware that this may not be such a great idea. Bathrooms are by definition humid rooms, exposed to a lot of heat and steam from your baths and hot showers. If by hazard, you didn’t manage to insulate your bathroom cork floor very well, and some water leaks between the floor and the ground, mold will develop and you’ll have a hard time in getting rid of it. Practically, you’ll have to remove and replace your cork flooring if this happens. This is only one reason for not installing cork floors in bathrooms and kitchens. Mold is very dangerous for your health. In time, it may trigger respiratory symptoms, asthma and allergies. If you have young children, they would be very exposed to such illness, because their immune system is not entirely formed, so they are at high risk of developing childhood asthma, which is chronic and they’ll have to live with it for the rest of their life. You don’t want to cause that to your kids, do you?
Even if you don’t care about the mold, although you should, there’s one more reason why cork floors and bathrooms don’t match: if you soak the cork, it will absorb the water and retain it inside, thus getting rotten after a while. Your bathroom floor will look very much like an old dock in an ancient harbor. Again, you’ll have to spend money and to go through all the hassle of replacing the flooring, because you wanted to be fashionable and forgot about common sense when you chose it.
Should you insist in your decorating madness, at least make sure you discuss your idea with a home design specialist, or with a cork flooring manufacturer or retailer. They could give you some additional advice on how to maintain your bathroom cork flooring intact and in very good shape for as long as possible. If their advice, however, is that you should only take cold showers and not more often tham once a month, maybe you should reconsider your thoughts and buy some nice, elegant, waterproof ceramic tiles and put them on your bathroom floor.
Life’s better when we make things easier. Why complicate them?