Am I Restricted to the Colors & Patterns on your Website?
A talented designer can envision many color and design possibilities in flooring. We encourage such creativity and offer tile layout patterns as well as some photos to help spark new ideas. Additionally, we can also cut cork tiles to your custom specifications.
We are always working on new colors and try to keep our website up to date. We also have the ability to modify one of our current colors as well as developing a custom color for you. If you have a color sample that you’d like us to match, contact us and we’ll discuss how to proceed. There are minimum order of 100 sq. ft per custom color along with a custom surcharge.
Do You Send Out Samples?
What are the Standard Tile Sizes?
What about Thicker Cork Tiles?
Some cork manufacturers sell a thicker tile (5/16″ is another common size). Thicker tiles are stiff and tend to cup up at the edges when installed, especially when installed using a common “wet” adhesive like DriTac. This is a single part adhesive that is troweled down thick enough to ooze up around the tiles. You have a wet material along the bottom of a dry tile and the cork is going to react during the hours of cure time as DriTac sets up and dries. This is a standard install practice in the industry and it is a source of problems.
Our approach is very different because we’ve taken all these problems into consideration and use different adhesives and finishes which are higher quality and also a bit more expensive. The first difference is our cork which is 4mm or 3/16″ thick. This tile has more flexibility than the 5/16″ size which is stiff. We use only a contact adhesive which is similar to a rubber cement application. Both the tile and the subfloor surface have the adhesive rolled on them with a paint roller. We apply the adhesive to the tiles here at the factory where they dry to slightly tacky before shipping. The installer rolls the same adhesive on the subfloor and waits 1 hour til it is tacky. When you stick the tacky tile to the tacky subfloor, the bond is immediate and extremely strong. No cure time and no movement. This also means that the tile can not warp, cup or curl. The tile is essentially molded tight to the floor. The only way that the cork moves from that point forward is the surface part of the tile in response to temperature and humidity changes. This is also why we put a micro-beveled edge on the floor tiles. This allows for movement in the top of the tile without the possibility of one tile expanding and peaking over the other which could occur with a 90 degree angle tight against another 90 degree.