 Stone flooring rubs into faint undulations,
wood flooring is worn smooth; even threadbare matting has a certain
rustic appeal.
One of the reasons flooring has such a powerful influence over the
feel of a room is the way it acts as a sound-board; battered by football,
scraped by furniture, reflecting and vibrating with ambient noise.
Sprung wooden flooring has a faint ring under the heel – bare
wooden stairs are particularly resonant. Stone flooring has a duller,
more muted note. Mattings absorb sound, especially when padded by
thick underlay, and deep wool carpet is quietest of all. Depending
on its position in the house, the living room may be an area that
is retreated to – as in most older houses where it is separated
from other rooms by a hall – or an area that is constantly crisscrossed
to get to other rooms, a layout increasingly common in contemporary
houses and loft-style apartments with more open-plan arrangements.
The living room as retreat is well served by fitted carpet or, more
fashionable flooring is now matting. The most suitable
mattings for living room are tough, hard - wearing coir and sea-grass.
They can be fitted wall to wall like carpet, or laid as mats, bound
at the edges. The fibres of sea-grass are smooth and pleasant underfoot
– although perhaps a little too knobbly for babies knees –
and are water- and stain –resistant. A fresh smell reminiscent
of new hay is an added bonus.
 Stone
and wood flooring are the most durable of all natural floorings, as the gleaming
boards and marble hallways of many an old house can testify. Old wooden
flooring varies hugely in quality, from the cheap deal boards of attic
bedrooms to the rich inlay of fine parquet. Even the most forlorn
old wooden flooring can be coaxed back from decrepitude by sanding, filling,
staining and sealing, and the reward will be a floor that is original
and unique.
For an old house that has lost its wooden flooring to chipboard, reclaimed
wooden flooring can restore character and a sense of history.
Once almost exclusively allied with the recreation of ‘period’
interiors, wood is now just as popular in chic contemporary interiors;
indeed an array of look-alikes, including laminates, veneers and multi
–layer floorings have been developed as less expensive substitutes.
You can even buy vinyl that looks as though it has been freshly sawn.
However, none of these alternatives are as hard -wearing as solid
wood, and the laminates and vinyls miss out completely on the variety
of colour, shading, knots and graining that make real wood so interesting
to the eye. Modern solid wood flooring is usually factory-sealed or oiled so that
no after –treatment is needed. Gaps and shrinkage are minimized
and there is a huge choice of types of wood, from the rosy tones and
definite graining of wide oak boards to the more uniform honey of
beech. Wide boards, strong graining and dark knots create more rustic
look, while pale, faintly grained woods tend to look sleek and modern.
Fitted carpet, especially of the brightly coloured and patterned variety,
has suffered a loss of popularity in recent years. Although warm and
yielding underfoot and, thanks to powerful vacuum cleaners, rather
easier to maintain than combinations of hard flooring and rugs, brightly
coloured wall-to-wall pile can lookout of place in an interior where
natural materials and colours are the predominant decorative motif.
In rooms such as children’s bedrooms, where the warmth, comfort
and safety of fitted carpet is most desirable, neutral, natural shades
of wool carpeting look suitably inartificial.
Between the extremes of bare boards and wall-to-wall wool are the
many kinds of flooring woven from vegetable fibres, which can either
be fitted or laid as rugs. Some of these may be dyed or bleached for
a variety of colours, but mostly they sold on the strength of their
natural colouring and their textural interest, which is both a function
of weave and raw material. One of the softest of these natural floorings
is jute. Like a tougher version of flax, jute fibres are made from
the fibrous inner bark of a large herbaceous plant which grows in
hot, damp regions of Asia. Harvested by hand, the stalks are softened
in water before being dried in the sun and then spun. Tougher flooring than
jute, but more susceptible to stains, is sisal, which is woven from
fibres extracted from the spiky leaves of a bush grown in the subtropical
regions of Brazil, Mexico and East Africa. The toughest of all is
coir, traditionally used for rope making and doormats. Coarse and
prickly, coir fibres are removed from coconut husks after softening
in saltwater, and are then pounded by stone, combed out and dried
before weaving.
 Probably
the most tactile of all the natural flooring is sea-grass, which
also benefits from a particularly delicious smell like freshly cut
hay. Sea-grass grows in China in paddy fields that are regularly flooded
by seawater. Even when the grass is harvested, dried and spun, the
resulting yarn remains surprisingly waterproof. For this reason, sea-grass
cannot be dyed and is naturally stain-resistant. Combinations of wool
and sisal, wool and jute, sea-grass and sisal, even woven paper and
sisal, continue to broaden the choice of natural floorings. Abaca,
derived from banana leaves, is another newcomer to the domestic market.
As our appetite for ‘honest’ materials grows, ancient
skills are being combined with modern manufacturing processes to produce
fabrics and flooring that combine the unique appeal of the hand-crafted
with lower costs and availability.
Knowing that your linen pillowcase started life as talk or that the
fibres of your matting once coated a coconut shell can only add to
their appeal. Both are examples of natural structures that cannot
be bettered synthetically, and instances of man’s extraordinary
ability to cultivate, process and adapt the world’s raw materials
for his own use and pleasure. |
