If you love the look of marble flooring, you may want it to be installed throughout your home. However, since marble can be expensive, you may choose to limit it to an entry, your kitchen, or a guest bath. Marble is a luxury building material, and it lends opulence to any room it's in. Here's a look at the benefits of marble, some things to know about its care, and how it's installed.
Marble Has A Luxurious Look And Long Life
Your marble floor could last a lifetime if you care for it properly. If the flooring accumulates stains and scratches over the years, the marble can be refinished by sanding and polishing the surface so it looks as good as new. While a long life is a nice benefit that makes the cost worthwhile, the appearance of a marble floor is what makes it so desirable.
Marble flooring comes from stone that's cut from the earth. It's a natural material that's cut into slabs and tiles to be used for building materials. Since it's made by nature, each slab of marble has a unique appearance that's determined by the color shading and pattern of the veins. This makes a marble floor beautiful and eye-catching.
Marble can also be finished in different ways. You can choose a matte appearance or you can choose a highly polished surface that makes the floor shine. The shine comes from reflected light and the translucent quality of marble. This gives your room an even more attractive appearance.
Marble is softer than granite, but it's still stone, so it's durable. Also, stone flooring is perfect for use with radiant floor heat. You could install marble tiles in your bedroom over radiant floor heating and have a nice warm floor to greet your bare feet on winter mornings.
Marble Is Sealed For Easy Care
Marble is a porous material, so it needs to be sealed for protection. Sealing keeps the marble from soaking up water and being stained. Your installer may seal the floor after it's installed, and you may want to seal it again every year or so.
Sealing makes it much easier to care for your floor and keep it clean, so sealing is worth the effort. Fortunately sealing is easy to do, but if you don't want to seal the floors yourself, you can hire a service to do it for you.
Marble Tiles Are Installed With Grout And Mortar
Marble flooring is often made up of large tiles of marble. The tiles are installed like any other type of tile flooring that uses mortar and grout. First, the old flooring has to be taken off down to the subfloor. Then, a cement board is added.
The tiles usually start in the middle of the room for the best appearance. Thin-set mortar is spread on the cement board a tile at a time and the tile is pressed on top so it sticks to the floor. Spacers are added between tiles to keep them apart and to create the grout lines. The rest of the tiles are installed and then sealed.
The next step is to put grout in the grout lines. Once the grout has cured, the installer may seal the floor once again so the grout can be sealed as well.
Reach out to a local flooring supplier or flooring contractor to learn more about marble floors.
