Vinyl seems to be everywhere in our lives, part or all of a million different products for thousands of uses.

Life without vinyl would be inconvenient at the least.

Given that, you would think the construction of vinyl flooring would consist of a simple, age-old process, repeated as needed. Well, think again, shopper.

The manufacturing of vinyl flooring uses highly sophisticated techniques, complex methods and precise systems. All to provide you with quality vinyl flooring.

Recently, a newer process has been developed that offers you even more beautiful, durable and fashionable choices.

So come along with us as we explain how vinyl flooring is made.

Who knows. What you learn here and in the other vinyl sections just may be what you’ve been shopping for: a flooring solution for the way you live.

Rotogravure Construction: spinning endless possibilities.

The rotogravure printing process is the most commonly used method for making residential vinyl floors.

It offers you unlimited possibilities in pattern and design. Imagination, start your engine!

This process involves a print cylinder that spins around while the vinyl's core layer (called the gel coat) passes underneath.

The cylinder systematically prints various colored ink dyes to create the pattern.

After the print dyes are set a clear wearlayer is applied to the surface.

Like the inlaid vinyl floor, the appearance retention of a rotogravure vinyl floor is dependent on the durability of the clear wearlayer.

The wearlayer: not just important, crucial.

The wearlayer is absolutely critical to the performance of your vinyl floor – it’s lasting potential.

The thickness of the wearlayer varies with each vinyl product collection, or series, and is generally measured in mils.

The thickness of a mil is about the same as a page in your telephone book.

So a 10-mil wearlayer would be comparable in thickness to about 10 pages of your telephone book.

Generally, the more expensive vinyl floors have thicker wearlayers.

Your expectations for how long your vinyl floor will look new and fresh are based on the wearlayer's performance.

To help you understand wearlayer construction we need to define what the performance characteristics are that we are looking for in a vinyl floor.

These performance characteristics can be divided into several areas:

• Easy to clean.
• Stays looking like-new.
• Resists staining from normal household products.
• Doesn't show scratches easily.
• Easy to clean up spills.
• The easy to clean characteristic relates to how tough it is to remove soiling and other marks from the floor's surface.

When a floor begins to look old and drab it is usually caused by hundreds of fine hairline scratches in the wearlayer.

These fine scratches come from dirt, grit and sand laying on the wearlayer's surface.

However there’s good news, shopper. The new generation of vinyl floors has all the ingredients to resist showing wear and staining.

Plus all the beauty, style and value to certainly put vinyl in the running as a potential flooring solution for the way you live.