The History Of Cork & Why It Is a Perfect Flooring Option

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When you pull the cork of your wine bottle, you don’t really think about its origins and you’re just happy to be able to pull it out of the bottle and to pour yourself a nice glass of red or white wine. It is a completely natural material that we get from the cork oak tree and its use goes back many thousands of years. It can be used for so many things, like corkboards, cork for wine bottle stoppers, and even cork flooring. We discuss alternative flooring methods on the blog quite a lot, and today we wanted to delve a bit more into the history of cork and why it’s a great flooring option.

Let’s delve in.

A bit of the history of cork

Cork is harvested when the tree reaches about 20 years old and then every nine years after that point. It has been used in bottles dating back to the tombs in Egypt and the Greeks and Romans used it for a number of applications including for their fishing nets, for their sandals and of course as wine bottle stoppers. Cork’s use was continued for many years after that point and its primary use nowadays is as a bottle stopper, but now we are moving towards plastic stoppers and so we have been using it for other things. Cork is actually a wonderful flooring material. 

In 1890, a German company developed a way to use up all of the waste cork and they figured out a way to stick it altogether and make it into sheets which could be cut into any shape.

It followed that it could be used as a type of flooring and this is where we are today. It is now used as flooring. Any reliable Sydney natural cork flooring supplier as well as other suppliers all over the world swear by the benefits that it offers, and the following are just some of those.

• It’s Good For Your Health – This is a strange statement to make but cork material is naturally resistant to all kinds of mould, mildew and it is also anti-microbial. If you have kids in the house who suffer from allergies, then the air quality in your home will improve almost immediately when you remove your carpets and you replace them with cork flooring. This type of floor doesn’t shed any of its micro fibre and it provides the same heat under your feet as a carpet would.

• It’s Good For The Environment – If there was ever a flooring product that was completely recyclable and reusable, then this is it. It has a much lower environmental impact on our ecosystem than any other floor coverings and when it is made, there is almost no waste at all and any leftover materials are being reused and bound together to make more tiles and more planks. The other wonderful thing is that the trees from which the cork is extracted do not need to be cut down and that’s great news for the environment.

These are only a couple of the applications when it comes to flooring and there are numerous more. It comes in different varieties of styles, colours and sizes and it is perfect for any room in the house. It is also incredibly durable and you can expect your cork floor to last you many decades as long as you take care of it and make sure that it is properly maintained.