4 Green Flooring Options for Eco-Friendly Homes

These days, many homeowners are doing whatever they can to ensure that their home is as environmentally friendly as possible. From installing smart technology that reduces energy consumption to composting food scraps, there are many ways to make a home greener, but one way many homeowners overlook is the types of flooring used in the home. While it may not seem like it, the floor a homeowner chooses to use can have a big impact on the environment through using renewable or recycled materials. This can make an impact on many buyers when selling your home. Here are some of the different eco-friendly flooring options for homes.

1. Wool Carpeting

While normal carpeting is often fairly eco-friendly, wool carpeting is even more so because it uses no manmade materials. Wool can come from a variety of animals such as sheep, llamas, alpacas, and more. These animals need to have their wool shorn regularly to keep them healthy, and doing so causes them no harm, so using their wool is not only good for the environment, but it’s good for the animals as well. And on top of this, wool carpeting can be advantageous over normal carpeting because it’s both flame retardant and dirt repellant. The latter especially can make it an especially good choice for homeowners who want the soft feeling of carpeting but have medical problems such as asthma that make them sensitive to the dust and dirt that is held in by normal carpeting. 

2. Glass Tile

Glass is one of the few materials that can be recycles over and over again without any ill repercussions. While many homeowners wouldn’t expect to see glass used for floors, it can be an excellent material for use in floor tiles. Because glass is easy to clean and doesn’t hold in spills or stains, it can be an especially good addition to rooms like kitchens and bathrooms that may see a lot of water or other mess falling onto the floors. One thing homeowners need to know before investing in glass tiles is that they are extremely reflective due to being made of glass, so they may not be a good fit for some homeowners.

3. Cork

Cork is a unique material among flooring options. While it comes from trees, it isn’t like hardwood, and while it’s soft, it isn’t like carpeting. Cork is the bark of the cork oak tree, and it’s harvested safely without harming the tree. And because the bark regrows every three years, it’s also a renewable resource, much like the wool used for carpeting. Cork can be good for homeowners who like their home to have a unique aesthetic as it’s one of the flooring materials that isn’t seen very often. 

4. Bamboo

For Vic West homeowners who love the look of hardwood floors but choose not to use it because of issues with deforestation, bamboo can be an excellent alternative. Bamboo looks a lot like hardwood, but while normal trees take at least 20 years to grow to a point where they can be harvested, bamboo only takes 3-5 years. Not only does bamboo have a much smaller impact on the environment than hardwood, but it’s also more cost-effective as well. 

These four different green flooring options can be an excellent addition to any home, and they’re just some of the different options on the market for homeowners to choose from. For more information about other available options, be sure to contact an expert at a local hardware store to get the best selection for every room.