LAKE CABINET & FLOORING, INC.   

 Floors with Style

Sheet Vinyl Construction

Homeowners are offered two types of residential sheet vinyl flooring. The older construction type is called inlaid construction and the newer, more common construction type is called rotogravure construction.  The inlaid process uses solid colored vinyl chips that are laid on top of a carrier sheet and then bonded together with heat and pressure. The inlaid process has been around for years and generally results in geometric type patterns and designs. Residential inlaid floors have a clear wear-layer placed over the top of the chips to make the floor's finish easier to maintain. It is important to note that you are not walking directly on the inlaid chips, instead you are walking on the clear wear-layer that was placed on top of the chips. The appearance of your inlaid floor is dependent on how long the clear finish will last.  The rotogravure printing process is the most commonly used method for making residential vinyl floors and offers unlimited possibilities in pattern and design. This involves a print cylinder that spins around while the vinyl's core layer (called the gel coat) passes underneath. The cylinder systematically prints various colored ink dyes to create the pattern. After the print dyes are set a clear wear-layer is applied to the surface. Like the inlaid the appearance retention of a rotogravure floor is dependent on the durability of the clear wear-layer.    

The wear-layer is critical to the performance of a vinyl floor. The thickness of the wear-layer varies with each manufacturer's collection, or series and is generally measured in mils. The thickness of a mil is about the same as a page in your telephone book. So a 10 mil wear-layer would be comparable in thickness to about 10 pages in your telephone book.

The more expensive vinyl floors generally will have a thicker wear-layer and a much better finish. Your expectations for how long your vinyl floor will look like new are usually based on the wear-layer's performance. To help you understand wear-layer construction we need to define what the performance characteristics are we are looking for in a vinyl floor. These performance characteristics can be broken into several key areas:

• Easy to clean
• Stays looking like new
• Resists Stains
• Does show scratches
• Resists tearing and denting