The choice of flooring for commercial or public buildings is never just a matter of cost or aesthetics. There are many practical considerations and sometimes specific matters of safety as well.
The last of these can be paramount in certain settings, where specially designed flooring materials like safety vinyl can play a key role in maintaining safety and preventing bad accidents from taking place.
In general, vinyl has a range of qualities that are very useful and desirable: It is durable, water resistant and is increasingly available in attractive modern designs, with realistic stone or wood effects among the patterns you can obtain today, a vast improvement on the unattractive and unrealistic designs of many years ago.
How Safety Vinyl Prevents Accidents
However, safety vinyl takes things a step further. Because vinyl is water-resistant, that does t mean that moisture will sit on the surface and that can mean that there is a risk of slips. In any setting that can bring some accident risk, but in some settings, the consequences could be dire.
For example, in healthcare settings when sharp needles, surgical instruments and fragile, vulnerable patients are present, the results of slips or trips could be catastrophic, while wet environments such as sports facilities with showers and people getting wet with sweat or swimming pool water could also lead to bad accidents.
Other settings where this may be used include veterinary surgeries and also schools, where children may place themselves at risk by not obeying instructions to run rather than walk. Large commercial kitchens can also benefit, preventing bad accidents involving sharp utensils, hot water or heavy equipment, as well as the consequent food waste.
Why You May Need To Change The Flooring
It should be noted that to be genuinely labelled as safety flooring, a product must meet the EN13845 specification. This is crucial because anything that falls short of this may not be sufficiently slip-proof to ensure the necessary safety of people and property.
Indeed, it may be that you have laid flooring in the past that you thought was slip-proof, only for it to turn out not to be quite as safe as you thought, perhaps with severe consequences.
Alternatively, the flooring in the building may clearly not meet its needs, either due to the previous owners choosing the wrong flooring or because the building is undergoing a change of use that necessitates a change of flooring material.
Because there are so many different settings in which safety vinyl might be used, it is also worth looking at our range to see different designs. While the primary requirements are functional, having a design that fits well with your premises in terms of colour or décor theme is also important.
For example, calming colours are used extensively in places like hospitals, while there may be brighter colours in schools. A sports club may want colours that are in keeping with those of the teams based there.
With the right protection against accidents while retaining the various qualities of resistance to damage and water, along with ease of cleaning, slip-proof vinyl can add an extra layer of necessary security to outstanding floor quality.
