Depending on who you ask, the best kind of sports flooring is vinyl, polyurethane or hardwood. The truth is there’s a place for all three surfaces. However, perhaps the most versatile of them all is vinyl sports flooring because it offers a variety of desirable features. Here are 3 reasons to choose vinyl sports flooring for your project:
Customisable elasticity
The playing qualities of sports flooring are defined by the elastomeric properties of the surface (some of the perceptible aspects of this include how cushioned the surface is and how it dampens sound).
Vinyl flooring is available in the widest range of elasticities to suit any sport. Vinyl sports flooring can offer point elastic performance which deforms in a small area, area elastic performance where the energy is spread over a large area, and mixed elastic performance, where you get both point and area elastic qualities.
Durability
Vinyl flooring consists of several layers. The top layer is an extremely durable PVC that’s designed to resist abrasion and impacts. Vinyl will never crack or split on impact because it is too flexible. This makes it fantastic for sports halls.
Underneath vinyl there’s underlay. The underlay provides the desired elastomeric properties we discussed above. Underlay also protects the subfloor from damage which is particularly important for screw-fixed plywood floors. Concrete floors need an underlay so they are not rock hard and so the PVC can compress into something soft.
Any colour
Vinyl sports flooring can be finished in any colour. The vinyl itself comes in a wide range of colours, but it can also be finished with a suitable coating. The coating is similar in durability to yellow lines on roads. It won’t come off.
You can also mark-up vinyl flooring to make pitches and courts. The coating used for lines is the same that we use to colour the vinyl. The ability to colour vinyl flooring means we can easily coat the playing surface and split it into colour-coded areas. The range of colours available makes it a good choice for schools and leisure centres.
Overall
Vinyl sports flooring is a multi-purpose surface that you can use in a sports centre or gymnasium. It’s durable and offers excellent performance.
The real draw though is how you can change its elastomeric properties with underlay. It also comes pre-laminated, allowing for faster installation and lower installation cost.