Healthcare Flooring Installation
From West Palm Beach to Ft Lauderdale, Florida and beyond, flooring used in hospitals and medical centers is not just an aesthetic choice; it plays a major role in maintaining a clean, sanitary, and safe environment while impacting employee and patient satisfaction, maintenance schedules, and budgets. In every area, from the operating room to the waiting room, surfaces need to withstand various pressures. Healthcare is a challenging field; it is no less demanding on the floors.
Is Vinyl Flooring the Best Option for Hospitals and Medical Centers?
Vinyl composition tile (VCT) has long been a popular choice for healthcare centers: while inexpensive, VCT is also durable, impact-resistant, strong, fade-resistant, UV-resistant, and sound-absorbing – all qualities that hospitals and medical centers need in areas like hallways, nurses stations, patient rooms, and emergency rooms.
But there is a wide variety of other flooring used in hospitals and medical centers today, including:
- Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT): LVT is highly durable, spill-resistant, and easy to clean and maintain, making it a cost-friendly choice as well. It is available in a wide range of styles and can mimic natural stone, wood, and tile without the weight and cost.
- Great for: Entrances and Lobbies
- Sheet Vinyl: This resilient flooring is a solid choice as it is durable and sterile. Unlike natural materials (e.g., wood, bamboo), it does not absorb fluids or retain microbes. When sheet vinyl is installed in a healthcare environment, the professional installation team at East Coast Flooring & Interiors recommends heat welding with a large amount of flash coving. Heat welding evenly seals each seam, while flash coving reduces the risk of fluids and bacteria being caught between the floors and the walls.
- Great for: Nurses Stations, Patient Rooms, and Emergency Rooms
- Sheet Rubber: Another type of resilient flooring, sheet rubber performs similarly to sheet vinyl.
- Great for: Nurses Stations, Hallways, Patient Rooms, Emergency Rooms
- Carpet or Carpet Tile: Sometimes, a warmer, more comforting touch is required. Broadloom carpet is more durable than other options, and it will require regular vacuuming to remain clean and sanitary.
- Great for: Waiting Rooms, Assisted Living Facilities, Resident Rooms
- Porcelain Tile: This surface is non-absorbent, durable, and easy to maintain. It’s not ideal for all areas, but used judiciously, it creates a professional, yet welcoming, environment.
- Great for: Entrances, Walls
Why Experience Matters in Healthcare Flooring Installation
Installing flooring in a hospital or medical center isn’t just a case of tearing up a floor and laying a new one down. Many areas of the facility are still in active use. This requires flooring installers to only remove the flooring that can be replaced by the end of the day. This may also mean that flooring installers work night shifts, so that no work is being done during the hours of operation for clinics and specialty departments – keeping patient care from being affected.
In addition, noise and dust must be minimized. While this is always a concern in any installation, a healthcare facility requires even greater level of containment and cleanup for patients’ health and safety. Sanitary flooring also means sanitary installation. East Coast Flooring & Interiors has experience working in sterile environments that have even required installers to don scrubs. Having been through hospital health system certification and approval processes before, our team of Florida medical flooring installation experts is more than able to accommodate your requirements to ensure your facility is consistently functioning at full capacity and full service when it comes to patient care.
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