Defined as the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties, after generations of being underappreciated in favor of the quest for new ideas or products, in 2024 resilience is back to being what matters most. Whereas the tech revolution has infused schools, offices, and leisure life with touch-button ease, resilience isn’t about reinventing the wheel or even continuous improvement. It’s about being good all along.
“Armstrong Flooring has been the biggest name in Vinyl Composition Tile (VCT) for decades, and by a significant margin,” says Yon Hinkle, Vice President of Resilient Products for AHF Products. As a nimble forward-thinking flooring company with 16 brands under its umbrella, AHF Products consolidates a vast collection of well-known, hard surface product names like Armstrong Flooring™ into a portfolio of virtually endless possibilities. “Initially, what drove Armstrong Flooring brand’s VCT success was the ability to produce perfectly square, color-consistent tiles. That may seem like a small thing, but uniformity is critical to covering 100,000 SF of floor space in 12 x 12-inch squares in a school, hospital, or mass retail store.”
Over the last 20 years, the ethos of education has shifted from a stand-and-deliver pedagogy of authoritative instruction to a discover- and-react model of intrinsic learning. Consequently, educational designers are compelled to be ever more creative in their application of color, tacticity, experiential placemaking, and wayfinding. In flooring, the desire for the next new thing has led some to overlook VCT as the preeminent high-traffic, design-flexible hard surface flooring solution it always has been.
“Architects, educators, and users all expect modern schools to be less institutional, more accommodating, multi-purpose, vivid, and energetic in their use of space and building materials,” says Hinkle. “Today, designers and educators understand building materials like flooring have cognitive impacts that can make learning and teaching easier. VCT may have been seen as old school, and some educators and designers have been trying other hard surface flooring options. Many of them to their determent.”
In reinvigorating VCT’s market share, AHF Products wants to remind the industry why VCT remains the smart choice for high traffic, low maintenance, and affordable flooring. Armstrong Flooring brand’s VCT lineup affords designers almost infinite choices to create flowing linear patterns, organic looks, and visual navigation cues for spaces of any sort. Modular flexibility includes large format shapes and sizes that unbridle the imagination without adding costs to construction or complexity to the installation. Made primarily of vinyl and limestone, Armstrong Flooring branded VCT tiles are constructed with integral color chips to produce a top-to-bottom true-through color pattern that allows the surface to remain the same as wear and tear takes a toll.
“Schools, hospitals, and mass retail settings all require flooring that can stand up to a lot of use and abuse,” continues Hinkle. “The dirt and residue from shoes, heavy rolling loads, things being dropped and broken, spills, and impacts of all sorts all combine under the pressure of constant traffic to scuff up the floor no matter what it’s made of. If someone jams their chair into VCT and gouges it, that can be buffed up and polished out so that it looks like it never happened.”
As Hinkle points out, VCT’s value is in its resilience. Not just as a market share mainstay in hard surface flooring or in its ability to be rejuvenated to an as-new condition, but in the established maintenance for the owner day in and day out. Daily maintenance is as simple as a wet mop and a natural cleaner. A routine scrub and polish every 4 – 6 months will keep high-use hallways and classrooms looking like new when today’s students are grandparents.
“VCT is very easy to clean and dry, which is great,” says Hinkle. “However, the fact that most owners will never need to replace it in the building’s lifetime makes it amazing. All the districts and designers who tried to find better hard flooring are once again looking at VCT. Eventually, everything else wears out. VCT doesn’t.”
Hinkle says for most owners, it’s not only the cost of replacing the floor. It’s the inconvenience. Deconstructing a classroom floor, grinding concrete, and putting down adhesives and flooring isn’t overnight work.
“AHF Products has worked hard to expand the creative possibilities of VCT because we believe it is the best choice for high-traffic educational spaces,” says Hinkle. “We researched the most popular school colors in the United States and built our color options outward from there. There is also a water jet process where a school logo or custom artwork could be water-cut into VCT. When you add Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT) products as partners to VCT, there is almost no limit to what designers can do with vinyl tile.”
AHF Products also is launching a new line of VCT under its AHF Contract brand, Iliad™, which introduces fresh visuals and a new color palette to the revered family of classic VCT.
“The push for continuous improvement is essential, especially in education where we shape future generations,” finishes Hinkle. “However, in hard surface flooring, tried and true is still better. From the intersection of durability, value, ease of maintenance and installation, and now creative choice, VCT is hard to beat.”
