When planning a renovation and deciding which floor covering to give preference to, many make a choice in favor of linoleum. People's love for this material is explained, first of all, by its practicality. The simplicity of appearance should not be misleading: such a coating is resistant to mechanical damage and moisture, which is especially important for the kitchen, hallway and utilitarian premises.
Features of the
Linoleum is not only affordable, but also easy to install. The fact that it is not at all necessary to be an extra-class master to lay this material, but only minimal skills and understanding of the flooring technology are required, is a kind of motivation. This characteristic is especially relevant, given the current price tag for the services of professionals. Let's study this issue in more detail and find out all the intricacies of installation.
Modern linoleum is strikingly different from the coating of the times of the USSR, not only in performance, but also in decorative qualities. Depending on the material that is used to make the canvas, the final product acquires certain useful properties.
Manufacturers use:
- Natural materials. Giving preference to linseed oil, powdered limestone, coniferous wood resin, wood flour in combination with natural dyes. Buying natural linoleum, which is decorative, environmentally friendly and durable, is not a cheap pleasure.
- PVC (polyvinyl chloride). In this case, the base can be foamed or fabric with heat insulating or sound insulating properties. The coverage is also baseless.
- Alkyd / glyphthalic modified resins in combination with organic / inorganic fillers. Alkyd (glyphthalic) linoleum with a fabric base is characterized by high heat and sound insulation qualities.
- Nitrocellulose. The coloxyl coating has no base, it has good elasticity, resistance to humid environments. The disadvantage of such products is low fire safety.
- Rubber. The high elasticity and water resistance properties of the Relyn coating are due to the combined composition: synthetic rubber, recycled rubber and bitumen as a binding component of the lower layers.
Advantages and disadvantages
Consider in detail the arguments in favor of purchasing linoleum:
- Hygiene. It is immune to dust, is of no interest to pathogenic microorganisms and is dust-repellent.
- A variety of colors and textures. A large assortment expands the possibilities for decorating premises for any purpose and style.
- Simple installation. Self-laying linoleum is a procedure available to everyone who knows how to handle the simplest household tool.
- Hassle-free service. To maintain the cleanliness of a linoleum floor, regular washing with water is enough.
It is common for newer models to have anti-slip or bacteriostatic coatings that only benefit.
There are also several disadvantages:
- Contact with open fire and chemicals is contraindicated for this material; exposure to low temperatures and direct sunlight is also undesirable.
- High plasticity is another negative characteristic of linoleum. Regardless of the type, the flexible material always takes the shape of the surface on which it is laid, so the existing base will definitely need high-quality preparation. Otherwise, any unevenness will be noticeable, which will affect the appearance of the linoleum and nullify the effort spent.
How to Prepare?
The preparatory work has three key points.
Creation of optimal conditions in the room, which includes taking out furniture and putting things in order. According to SNIP, the value of the optimal temperature regime in the room where the material will be stored, before laying, should be from 15 ° C. The moisture content of the subfloors cannot be ignored either. If they are concrete, then the maximum is 5%, if they are made of wood or chipboard, then 10%. The norm of the humidity regime of the air is from 60%
Surface preparation. First, the skirting boards and fittings are dismantled - connecting elements, plugs, corners. The floor must be cleaned of debris, crumbs, grease stains. The better the base is prepared, the longer the linoleum will last. The flat surface underneath serves as a guarantee that the material will not stretch, deform and wipe. To understand whether it is really necessary to dismantle the existing coating or whether you can lay new linoleum on the old one, you need to evaluate the existing base. Most masters who have been repairing for several years advise not to neglect the removal of the previous layer
There are several serious arguments on the side of dismantling the old coating:
- Laying on a base that is free of dust, dirt, mold and mildew is the key to creating a healthy microclimate in the apartment.
- The leveled surface contributes to an even distribution of the load, which eliminates damage to the inside of the material.
- A clean base provides better adhesion of linoleum to the floor than in the case of laying on an old coating.
Coating preparation
An important part of preparing linoleum for laying is acclimatization in the room where you plan to lay it. The roll is placed upright and left as it is. If you yourself have to do the styling in the winter, then you will need to place the roll in the room in advance, letting it lie down in a folded form for half a day.
In low temperature conditions, the brittleness of the material increases. It is important that the linoleum warms up naturally, and the room temperature is suitable for this.
24 hours before the flooring, the roll is rolled and cut, leaving the panels to straighten to prevent the formation of waves. When cutting canvases, leave a 10 cm margin, taking into account the folds on the walls, placement in doorways, niches and under radiators. After cutting, the linoleum should be given time to lie down, leveled under its own weight. Alignment will proceed much more efficiently if large canvases are pressed down with small ones.
How to choose materials
Decide on the type of linoleum. The floor covering can be homogeneous (baseless) and heterogeneous, where a special lining is provided - felt or polyethylene. If the surface is flat, the first is considered the best option. When the floors have small irregularities, then the second type is preferable. Linoleum with felt backing can only be used in dry rooms.
The roll coating is durable, so there are 3 types of material:
- Household type. The scope of application of models with a low wear resistance class is limited to residential premises.
- Semi-commercial type. Coatings with a middle class of wear resistance are used in places of medium traffic. These can be small office spaces,
- Commercial type. The high class of wear resistance allows it to be used in premises with increased traffic.
The choice of the thickness of the sheet material in the case of laying on fiberboard depends on the height of the drops and the number of defects. If the surface is very uneven, then in order to hide all the imperfections, a thicker material is selected.
When choosing skirting boards for linoleum by material, the design of the coating is of decisive importance:
- For linoleum with imitation of parquet, skirting boards made of MDF / PFC with a wood-like texture are considered the optimal framing;
- For linoleum with other patterns, polyurethane / PVC fillets are most often used as a finishing touch.
When choosing skirting boards for linoleum by color, the easiest way is to heed the advice of professional designers who suggest starting from the color scheme:
- Floor covering. This is a classic. Skirting boards should be a couple of shades darker.
- Platbands. The main thing is that the framing in thickness and color coincides with the thickness and shade of the platbands.
- Background finishing. The dimensions of the room are important here. Plinths in a small room with a low ceiling are painted to match the walls, since with a contrasting frame it will visually decrease in size.
- Furnishings. It is based on the color of the largest piece of furniture that forms the center of the interior.
- Ram on the windows. This solution looks unusual, especially with unconventional colors of window frames - gray, beige, black, olive.
- Accent decor. Suitable for those who like non-standard solutions.
Another option is to choose a color arbitrarily, without tying it to anything. But the color palette would then be limited to neutral shades of white and cream.
Tools
During the installation process, you will need:
- Universal cutting knife and set of interchangeable blades.
- Building ruler-level, short meter ruler and long from 2 m.
- Connecting plinth for the linoleum plant on the wall.
- Notched spatula.
- Large roller.
- Roulette and pencil.
Cutting / trimming the material is much easier with special scissors, which come with replaceable blades. The markings are made with a trapezoidal blade, and the final trimming is done with a hooked blade.
From consumables, depending on the chosen styling method, prepare:
- putty mixture;
- clamping strips;
- Double-sided tape;
- composition for welding seam joints;
- emulsion adhesive-mastic;
- trailing edge;
- screws and nails.
How to calculate the material?
Linoleum is sold in rolls of various widths up to 5 m in half-meter increments. During installation, laying the material, you need to step back from the walls by 1-2 cm. Thanks to the gaps, the coating will not rest against the walls, starting to get lost and forming ugly waves. In order to avoid a mistake when calculating the material, it is important to carefully measure the room.
Algorithm of actions:
- Measure the width of the room. For accuracy, indicators are taken at the extreme points and in the center. With uneven walls, the highest measurement accuracy will be ensured by checking the indicators in four or five places.
- Measure the length of the room. The work is carried out according to the above-described scheme. It is important to measure at least three points in order to detect flaws or deviations.
- Rooms with non-standard geometry are measured differently. The baseline is the length / width of the room at its widest point. When choosing linoleum, determine on the spot which of the options is more suitable and how you will place it.
- Accounting for doorways. Often, laying involves inserting material into openings or joining it with a floor covering in an adjacent room. In this case, the margin is 70% of the wall thickness. When planning the installation inside the opening with the help of thresholds, proceed from the calculation that the door frame will hide the joints.
- Accounting for niches under heating radiators. The depth of the batteries on each side is measured, and then the total width of the coating is added to the resulting value.
- To the obtained indicators of length / width, they add 7 cm each, which will be a margin, allowing you to accurately adjust the linoleum to the base.
The presence of a small overlap is your insurance against unpleasant surprises when installing linoleum.
Laying rules for different coatings
The preparation of different surfaces has its own specifics.
Consider the requirements for any base for future coverage:
- It should be dry, smooth, firm. Use a spirit level to check that the surface is even.
- The allowable size of the gaps is 0.3 cm.
- Make sure there are no bumps, sagging, cracks, bulges, protruding screws, or nail heads.
Laying on uneven subfloors accelerates the wear of the coating, shortening its lifespan. The initial state of the foundation determines the scope of preparation work.
If you are going to lay linoleum on a wooden floor, then you need to inspect the floors for dropped fragments, curvatures, drops, all kinds of deformations.
Disadvantages are eliminated in several ways:
- You can putty problem areas, and then grind the surface with a grinder or plane.
- To make sheathing of fiberboard / chipboard / plywood. Hardboard flooring is allowed.
- Reanimate damaged parquet flooring by replacing missing planks and cycling it.
- Use self-leveling floors with leveling ability.
Linoleum is often laid over concrete. In almost every case, such a surface needs to be leveled.
Suitable for this:
- Cover with fiberboard / chipboard.
- Fill with a self-leveling mixture if it is necessary to eliminate minor differences in the surface.
- Make a concrete screed.
A new screed dries within a month, and self-leveling mixtures dry in a few days, which significantly saves time. Make sure you choose the right linoleum as not all varieties can be laid on a concrete floor.
For such bases, the following flooring models are suitable:
- Materials on a heat and sound insulating base.
- The main type of alkyd linoleum, which has a non-woven / woven backing.
- Some types of coating that exclude the possibility of combining directly with a rough version of the concrete base, therefore, you will need to create a dry layer using sheet material.
Consider a few more simple types of bases and the nuances of laying linoleum on them:
- On the carpet. You need to get rid of the obsolete coating in the room, clean the surface and level the problem areas.
- On linoleum. Not everyone wants to do unnecessary work, spend time and effort dismantling the old coating, so they limit themselves to laying new linoleum on top of the existing one. Such a base only needs to be thoroughly degreased.
- On the tiles. This is most often done in the kitchen or in the hallway. Loose tiles are re-glued. For leveling the surface, the leveling compound and Knauf floating floors are equally suitable.
How to lay: step by step instructions
You can lay linoleum in 3 ways:
- Free flooring. This method eliminates the fixation of the coating to the base, which is suitable for rooms up to 20 sq. M and not intensive use of the floor.
- By means of adhesive tape. It is advisable to use this option when the area of the room exceeds 20 square meters and the frequent movement of heavy objects is possible.
- With the help of mastic emulsion glue. It is imperative to refer to this method when it is planned to actively operate the coating in places with high traffic.
How to cut?
The first stage of do-it-yourself flooring technology involves marking the linoleum and cutting, when the coating has acclimatized in the room, lay down and smoothed out, getting rid of a specific "new" smell.
There are two options:
- Rolling the material along the base and cutting off the excess in place, which is faster than the second method, but the accuracy of cutting is questionable here if there is no skill.
- Carrying out all measurements with subsequent transfer to the surface to be cut. In this case, damage to the canvas is possible due to an error in dimensions.
When laying involves the use of a solid canvas, then after 2 days it will be possible to start installing the skirting boards, that is, in fact, to complete the work.
When you have to lay several canvases, it is important to master the wisdom of joining linoleum:
- When working with solid colors, place them in the direction of the light to achieve a "solid" finish.
- Place the patterned linoleum against the outer wall, making sure that the pattern of the canvases clearly matches.
- The connection of individual fragments implies their docking with each other along the factory edges.
- To make it easier to perform trimming, bending around utilities, wait until the material is finally acclimatized and acquires the necessary flexibility. At the points of the cut, the coating is alternately bent at the desired angles, neatly forming a contour.
Ready-made templates should be allowed to rest for several days. The canvases are laid out on the floor, observing the cutting pattern, and fixed with massive objects.
Styling process
Fixation methods
First, the floor and the back of the coating are primed. After a couple of days, when the primed surfaces are dry, we proceed to the installation itself.
Work order:
- Apply glue-mastic to the area of the base that is covered with linoleum and to the canvas itself.
- Transfer it to the treated area, then press down well.
- Smooth out the coating with a roller, removing the remaining air.
When applying mastic, it is important to ensure that the layer is not excessive, as a result of which the linoleum can go bumps.
You can also lay the flooring dry. Sequencing:
- First, you need to glue the perimeter of the base, the joints and optionally the entire coating with adhesive tape, leaving the protective layer of the tape intact.
- Spread the canvas, cut it out, let it rest.
- Trim seam allowances.
- Glue the first panel parallel to the wall.
- Raise the panel to the wall along which it was glued, after which, one by one, release the attached tapes from the protective layer, fixing the linoleum throughout the entire area.
The rest of the canvases are glued in the same way, then they are carefully smoothed, trying not to miss a single unevenness, otherwise all the work will go down the drain.
Flooring can be done with glue. Procedure:
- Unscrew the sheet from one edge, distribute the glue evenly over the base and leave the sheet on the floor. Roll the opposite side of the web to the border of the mastic coverage area and spread the glue over the base of the other part.
- A large roller is ideal for quick leveling of the surface. They begin to wield the tool from the middle, gradually moving towards the edges and getting rid of excess air.
- Smooth the canvas close to the walls using a spatula.
- With a metal ruler, the canvas is sequentially pressed closer to the wall, and then the excess is cut off with a knife, after having tucked a hook-shaped blade into it.
- The second canvas is fixed to glue in the same way, and it will need to be glued with an overlap on the surface of the first, going three centimeters.
It will take three days for the coating to become durable. Docking points can be processed after a day has passed from the moment of installation.
Natural linoleum can be qualitatively laid using special glue with specific properties. For this reason, increased requirements are imposed on the base. The surface must be dry, clean and absorbent, and self-leveling mixtures help to achieve these conditions. The roll is acclimatized and necessarily rewound so that the front side is inside: this will reduce the longitudinal shrinkage due to the action of the water-dispersed adhesive.
Work order:
- Cut the sheets according to the arrows on the back of the blade.
- Open and stir the glue. Distribute it on the prepared base.
- This type of linoleum is glued along the strip, and rolled with a steel roller, which weighs about 10 kg, which allows you to evenly distribute the glue, removing air from the bottom.
- After rolling the joints, the glue is allowed to dry completely, and then the joints are joined with a combi-marker for the welding cord.
- After cleaning the seams with a vacuum cleaner, you can start soldering, preheating them with a hairdryer to 350 ° C. Finishing trimming is carried out when the seams are completely dry.
How to fix?
Although in rooms with a small footage, the coating is not glued, here it may be necessary to fix the joints. This is done with double-sided tape. A longitudinal line is drawn on one sheet to indicate the middle of the adhesive tape. Having glued it to the right place, the protective layer is removed and two canvases are laid. Linoleum will stick to the tape, and the tape to the floor, and all together will ensure the fixation of the coating. It remains to install the skirting boards and nail or fasten the sills to the screws, fixing the linoleum at the transitions to other rooms. If the operation does not involve frequent rearrangement of furniture or equipment, then fixing the skirting boards is quite enough. For other cases, there is glue installation and additional fixation with skirting boards.
Soundproofing in the apartment
If noise insulation of floors is a priority, then to achieve the desired effect, you should use at the same time:
- Three-layer "floating" screed. It is a combination of a rigid sub-base, an insulating layer and a screed. Installation is carried out in a well-dried and heated room. Damping material is used to fill the gaps between the floor and walls. Skirting boards are attached only to one surface - the floor or walls, so that vibration bridges do not form.
- Soundproof underlay, the flooring of which is made both separately for linoleum, and as an addition to the sound-insulating "floating" floor. The substrate should be moderately thick and soft. If you plan to lay natural linoleum, then this part should be cork / jute and you should use waterproofing.
- Soundproof linoleum.
How long should linoleum stay after laying?
It is important to consider three factors:
- the thickness of linoleum;
- the amount of time during which the roll has acclimatized;
- room temperature during acclimatization.
To calculate the minimum time (hours), a formula is proposed: coating thickness (mm) x 3, provided that the temperature regime is ≥20 ° C or x 4, when the temperature was 10-15 ° C. It takes a day to smooth out the folds. Of course, we are not talking about strong bends, when the base is torn.
Examples and variants
The excellent decorative properties of linoleum are confirmed by numerous design projects. Let's look at examples of the possibilities of this coating in the interior of different rooms.
For kitchen spaces, the ideal solution is linoleum with imitation of marble, stone, wood or granite. A coating with geometric patterns, imitation of mosaics or ceramics looks spectacular
3D linoleum looks fantastic. This is one of the opportunities to become the owner of a truly exclusive interior
A great way to diversify the decor and perform zoning is to combine linoleum of different colors. This option is especially relevant for open-plan apartments
Contrasting tandems transform any setting
You can treat linoleum under a carpet or artistic parquet as you like, but not indifferently. It looks amazing in a matching interior. The main thing is to choose the right pattern and color
Bright linoleum with a pattern in the form of puzzles is an excellent solution for a nursery. Little fidgets are attracted by rich colors and everything unusual
Natural linoleum can become a highlight in the interior of premises for various purposes, from living rooms to children's rooms
In a spacious room, you can safely finish the floors with dark linoleum with a texture like laminate or parquet, which will add expressiveness to the interior
For information on how to lay linoleum with your own hands, see the next video.
