Compare tile-PVC and linoleum

PVC tile and linoleum are two sim­i­lar floor­ing mate­ri­als, each with its own advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. Our experts in the field of con­struc­tion have made a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of the fea­tures of these mate­ri­als, which can help you make a choice in favor of one or anoth­er mate­r­i­al.

We have summarized the pros and cons of using PVC and linoleum tiles in a table.

PVC — tiles

PVC tile — a mate­r­i­al con­sist­ing of: base, fab­ric or PVC; car­ri­er lay­er made of fiber­glass or PVC; a lay­er that forms the appear­ance, which is made of col­ored pulp with a pat­tern; a pro­tec­tive lay­er that pro­tects against abra­sion, mois­ture and slip.

It is divid­ed into sev­er­al class­es with spe­cif­ic areas of appli­ca­tion:

1. class 21–23, “house­hold” — used for rooms with low traf­fic — in res­i­den­tial apart­ments and hous­es;

2. class 31–33, “com­mer­cial” — used in offices, shops, cafes, restau­rants, etc.;

3. class 41–43, “indus­tri­al”, is used in rooms with heavy loads on the floors.

Installation of PVC tiles with interlocking joints

Lock con­nec­tions are a design of the “thorn-groove” type. There are two types of inter­lock­ing joints — mechan­i­cal, where indi­vid­ual tiles are joined togeth­er like a tongue-and-groove floor­board, and adhe­sive inter­lock­ing, in which the strength of the con­nec­tion is pro­vid­ed, in addi­tion to mechan­i­cal, with the help of glue. The prin­ci­ple of lay­ing tiles of both vari­eties is the same.

Of great impor­tance for ensur­ing the qual­i­ty of lay­ing the coat­ing is the obser­vance of the con­di­tions for the pro­duc­tion of work and the prepa­ra­tion of the base. Lay­ing tiles should be car­ried out at a room tem­per­a­ture of at least 16 °C and a rel­a­tive humid­i­ty of not more than 60%. Before lay­ing the mate­r­i­al must be kept in a warm room for at least 1 day.

Lay­ing tiles with lock­ing con­nec­tions is made start­ing from the wall oppo­site to the entrance. When lay­ing the first tile, it is nec­es­sary to observe a tem­per­a­ture gap of 3–5 mm between the edge of the coat­ing and the wall. The next tile is applied at an angle of 45 degrees and with a slight pres­sure snaps into place and joins the first. The tight­ness of the lock is ensured by padding with a rub­ber mal­let (ham­mer). Then the next row is laid with an off­set of 1/3 of the length of the first tile, and so on. If nec­es­sary, the tile can be eas­i­ly cut to the desired size with a knife.

Adhesive installation of PVC tiles

Tiles can be laid on an old floor­ing base — tiles, wood­en floors, linoleum, fiber­board, ply­wood, etc., how­ev­er, before lay­ing a new floor­ing, the base must be lev­eled and repaired in case of exist­ing defects. The base must be lev­el and dry. If a lev­el­ing screed is laid before lay­ing the coat­ing, the mois­ture con­tent of the base should not exceed 3%, which is mea­sured with a spe­cial device — a mois­ture meter.

With the adhe­sive method of lay­ing PVC tiles, lay­ing starts from the mid­dle of the room. First, mark­ings are made using a paint cord, pen­cil or mark­er, as a result of which the room is divid­ed into 4 parts. The first row of tiles is laid along one of the lines drawn on the base. Before lay­ing, a lay­er of glue is applied to the base along the mark­ing line, dis­trib­ut­ing it with a notched trow­el. In order to pre­vent the tiles from mov­ing, mask­ing tape is used, which tem­porar­i­ly fix­es each sub­se­quent tile to the pre­vi­ous­ly laid one.

The first row will be the basis for lay­ing the rest of the coat­ing. After lay­ing each sub­se­quent row, the sur­face is smoothed with a pres­sure roller to remove air from under the coat­ing. The adhe­sive set­ting time is at least 3 days, after which you can walk on the coat­ing.

Linoleum

There are many types of linoleum, which can be divid­ed into groups accord­ing to two cri­te­ria: accord­ing to the mate­r­i­al of man­u­fac­ture and accord­ing to the struc­ture.

Types by mate­r­i­al:

1. nat­ur­al linoleum, made from nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents. The raw mate­r­i­al for its pro­duc­tion is a mix­ture of lin­seed oil, wood flour and ground lime­stone with the addi­tion of pig­ments and resin, based on jute fab­ric. Used in rooms with high require­ments for inte­ri­or design;

2. poly­mer linoleum is made of PVC with plas­ti­ciz­ers, min­er­al fillers and pig­ments on dif­fer­ent bases: from fiber­glass, jute fiber, foamed vinyl or with­out a base;

3. rub­ber or relin — made from recy­cled used rub­ber and syn­thet­ic rub­ber with the addi­tion of pig­ments;

4. nitro­cel­lu­lose — made with­out a base of nitro­cel­lu­lose;

5. alkyd — pro­duced on the basis of woven mate­r­i­al from alkyd resin with the addi­tion of pig­ments.

Types by struc­ture:

1. homo­ge­neous linoleum con­sists of a homo­ge­neous lay­er, has a pat­tern and col­or through­out its entire thick­ness, which is 1.5–3 mm. It has high wear resis­tance, so it can be used for rooms with high traf­fic — lob­bies, halls, cor­ri­dors of build­ings. The minus of homo­ge­neous linoleum is a small selec­tion of col­ors and pat­terns and a lim­it­ed width of paint­ings — up to 2 m.

2. het­ero­ge­neous linoleum con­sists of a PVC lay­er on a fiber­glass base. Unlike homo­ge­neous, this coat­ing is pro­duced with a wide vari­ety of design solu­tions — with var­i­ous pat­terns, orna­ments, imi­ta­tion of mar­ble, ceram­ic tiles, block par­quet, etc. Pos­sess­es good fire-pre­ven­tion prop­er­ties, high degree of anti­skid. Wear resis­tance depends on the thick­ness of the pro­tec­tive lay­er, which can range from 0.5 to 1 mm. For offices, linoleum with a pro­tec­tive lay­er of at least 0.7 mm should be used.

Linoleum laying

Linoleum must be rolled out before lay­ing so that it rests and takes an even shape. If the width of the roll is suf­fi­cient to cov­er the entire area of ​​the room, then for lay­ing it is first turned halfway along the roll. The base is cov­ered with an adhe­sive com­po­si­tion using a roller and linoleum is laid on it, which is pressed and lev­eled with a clean roller towards the edges of the can­vas. Install the oth­er half in the same way. A day after lay­ing, you can install skirt­ing boards around the perime­ter of the room. If you have to make joints between the strips, then they are weld­ed using a spe­cial appa­ra­tus or con­nect­ed and sealed with adhe­sive.

Con­clu­sions: It is impos­si­ble to say unequiv­o­cal­ly which is bet­ter — PVC tile or linoleum, since there are many types of both mate­ri­als, while some types are iden­ti­cal in prop­er­ties and qual­i­ty. When choos­ing a mate­r­i­al for floor­ing, you should choose any kind of one or the oth­er mate­r­i­al, depend­ing on the pur­pose of a par­tic­u­lar room and its mode of oper­a­tion.