What to Know Before Venturing Into Permanent Flooring

Hundreds of millions of square feet of printed surfaces are included in the wood-like floors of restaurants, hospitals, lobbies, stores, apartments, hotel rooms, and remodeled homes. Some even include wood-grain textures. To preserve the illusion of a natural wood floor, each plank or tile in each space has subtle differences in pattern, color, and surface texture.

It appears to be a perfect application for digital printing, especially with UV-LED flatbed systems that can reproduce textured surfaces.

So, suppose your print business already digitally produces wallcoverings, wall panels, and temporary flooring for commercial clients. In that case, it’s natural to wonder: ‘Would it be possible to diversify into the growing, multi-billion-dollar market for permanent flooring?’

Unless your existing décor clients have already suggested a niche your shop is equipped to fill, it might be
a challenge.

Unlike wallpaper, the printed layer is just one of several layers that have been engineered and rigorously tested for factors such as the amount of foot traffic; exposure to dry, humid, or wet conditions; static load; thickness swell; and resistance to light, cleaning chemicals, spills, stains, mold, scratches, dents, and abrasion from rolling chairs, forklifts, or other wheeled equipment.

The beauty of the printed layer will be insignificant if it doesn’t adhere properly to the composite materials below it.

Still, opportunities exist for PSPs willing to adjust their prepress workflows and know how to consistently reproduce expanded-gamut color and multiple surface textures on their UV-LED flatbed printers.

Learn the Language

The best way to identify potential opportunities, spot design trends, and keep up with evolving jargon is to read flooring-industry magazines and architecture blogs (such as Material Intelligence). Easy-to-understand content is essential for the millions of architecture and design students, DIY-minded homeowners, building contractors, or flooring installers who may be choosing flooring for the
first time.

Here’s a quick overview of hard-surface flooring:

Wood Floors are built with milled lumber planks made from red oak, ash, maple, or cherry. Pure hardwood floors typically don’t include any synthetic materials and can last up to 100 years if properly maintained.

However, they can warp, crack, or swell if exposed to water, spills, and seasonal upticks in humidity levels.
Engineered Wood consists of multiple bonded layers of plywood or high-density fiberboard (HDF) topped with a thin natural wood veneer and a protective urethane layer. The core layers are designed to minimize humidity-induced expansion and contraction of the flooring.

Laminate Wood Flooring is made from compressed fiber materials such as medium-density fiberboard (MDF). But instead of being topped with a hardwood veneer, the compressed fibers are topped with a printed image or pattern beneath a protective wear layer.

Luxury Vinyl Planks and Tiles are like laminates but are made by bonding layers of composite materials that will provide the desired performance, such as underfoot comfort, sound absorption, and resistance to moisture, heat, and dents. These floors typically have a sound-absorbing underlayer, a high-quality vinyl print, and an easy-to-clean, abrasion-resistant wear layer.

Vinyl Sheet Flooring is produced in rolls and cut to fit the space in which the floor will be installed. It costs less and is easier to install and clean than plank or tile floors. Vinyl sheet flooring is often used in bathrooms, mudrooms, laundry rooms, basements, and environments where it is desirable to avoid dirt or moldy grout between the tiles.

Ceramic or Porcelain Tiles can be digitally printed to replicate wood or stone floors in indoor or outdoor spaces.

Industrial Printers Make Inroads

Some décor printing specialists or high-volume flooring manufacturers already use high-speed industrial inkjet printers to print on décor papers and films or directly on the panels used to make luxury vinyl.

Decor papers are porous, wet-strength papers that are soaked (impregnated) with a chemical sealant (such as melamine, polyurea, or resin acrylate) to achieve the desired characteristic of the floor.

Heat and pressure bind the printed decor paper to the core of plywood, fiberboard, or composite materials. If the print layer’s ink saturation levels are too high, lamination problems can occur.

Industrial inkjet printers that use water-based pigment inks have been developed to use the same décor papers used on traditional gravure presses. High-speed industrial inkjet printers that use UV-curable inks used by laminate manufacturers who want to eliminate the step of laminating a paper or film to the core.

Key Technologies and Their Use

Agfa InterioJet

The Agfa InterioJet multi-pass industrial inkjet printer outputs large, wide rolls of décor paper simultaneously. Each roll can be used to print a sequence of different designs or non-repeating patterns for a single floor surface. The printer uses Agfa-developed water-based pigment inks (in cyan, red, yellow, black, and light black) to match the colors of gravure presses precisely. Using red ink instead of magenta makes matching the colors in hardwoods easier. The red ink also minimizes metamerism in floors installed in areas with different types or different angles of lighting. The InterioJet runs with Agfa Asanti workflow that controls, simplifies, and automates the printing process from prepress to finishing. Agfa developed the InterioJet Enhancer module to optimize décor image renderings and ensure cross-technology color management. Chiyoda, a supplier of printed decor paper to producers of flooring, furniture, and car panels, uses two InterioJet printers for shorter print runs, print-on-demand jobs, and just-in-time deliveries.

Koenig & Bauer’s RotaJET VL Series is a high-speed web inkjet press for printing décor papers. Using the CRYK water-based inks, Agfa developed for the InterioJet, the RotaJET can print up to 18,000 sq. meters/hr. (193,750 sq.ft./hr.)

Interprint GmbH, a worldwide supplier of printed décor paper, uses three RotaJET printers to produce a wider variety of designs and job sizes – from early sampling to full production. An Interprint spokesperson shared that the RotaJET handles some production jobs that would have previously been printed with gravure.

Hymmen collaborated with Ricoh to develop the high-speed SATURN Digital Printing line, which can be integrated into laminate manufacturers’ existing production lines. Installing SATURN digital printing lines in regional manufacturing plants eliminates the need for laminate manufacturers to order high volumes of gravure-printed papers to be shipped to manufacturing sites closer to their regional distributors.

Hymmen’s JUPITER UV inkjet printing line includes models for printing on flat panels or web-fed rolls of décor paper or plastic films.

Barberán’s Jetmaster 1260 single-pass UV-LED printer can print on multiple types of flat materials used to make flooring and wall panels, including wood, flooring planks, paper, MDF, cork, glass, PVC, or tiles. A synchronized Barberán Jetmaster TXT device generates embossing effects and applies protective varnishes.

Design, Prepress, and Color Management

The printed decor layers in laminates and luxury vinyl don’t only have to replicate wood. Some luxury vinyl tiles are printed with stone-like surfaces or decorative patterns, graphics, or colors that complement the look of other surfaces in the room.

The Design Pool library includes print-ready patterns that can be used to print vinyl flooring, window films, wall coverings, privacy screens, and acoustic tiles. | Credit: Design Pool

Architects and interior designers use physically based renderings (PBR) to help clients visualize flooring and approve samples. PBR accurately simulates materials’ reflectivity, roughness, and textures in any lighting condition. PBRs also make it easier for customers to visualize the floor surface online.

Italian company Metis offers high-powered flatbed 3D scanners with a complete PBR workflow for making and selling décor products like laminate floors.

CGS ORIS distributes the Metis scanner and offers software to proof textured surfaces for industrial applications such as laminated flooring. It is a high-end developer of proofing and color management systems for industrial printing.

Roland DGA is partnering with CGS ORIS to enable Roland’s accurate output tools to be paired with high-quality 3D scans to deliver outstanding texture and detail replication.

According to Dave Edmonson, VP of new markets and business development at Roland DGA, “The Metis scans provide an entirely next level in file detail and content quality for proofing and sampling digitally reproduced surfaces and finishes.”

Companies that don’t possess expertise in designing flooring or scanning textured surfaces can contact companies specializing in surface design and reproduction, such as Design Pool and Real-World Textures.

Real-World Textures specializes in 3D scanning surfaces such as wood, metals, plasters, tiles, bricks, façade systems, and fabrics.

Design Pool is a pattern library and a resource for interior designers who want to support on-demand digital printing of textiles, wallcoverings, and flooring for commercial and residential interiors. Design Pool helps connect designers with digital printing companies that create décor products that can pass commercial standards.

At the 2024 NeoCon conference for commercial space designers, Design Pool founder Kristen Dettoni highlighted the company’s new Technology x Tradition wallcovering, printed on Roland’s Dimensor S large-format texture printers.

She also encouraged designers to choose one of Design Pool’s patterns to make samples of more than 20 different decor products made by print-service providers licensed to reproduce them.

“Working directly with printers is asking interior designers to change their shopping and specifying habits,” says Dettoni. “The conversations we had at NeoCon were about educating designers about newer printing technologies and getting them excited about the possibilities.”

Marketing Inspiration

If your shop already sells décor products to architects and designers, have they shown an interest in custom flooring? What can your company do to add value to the way commercial flooring is selected, fabricated, procured, and installed?

Perhaps designers would like realistic prototypes of patterns or surfaces they designed and might want to brand.

Or, you could set up a direct-to-consumer marketplace for customized decor products. Based in the UK, the For-The-Floor-&-More website offers custom-printed wallpaper, floor coverings, backsplashes, and tile.

This includes custom-printed vinyl flooring in sheets up to 2.9 meters wide. Online flooring buyers receive production proofs before the flooring is delivered for installation.

What’s Next?

For a long time, laminate flooring manufacturers had to outsource the printing of their decor papers and films to companies equipped with gravure presses. Now, they have other options, including in-house digital printing.

Flooring manufacturers such as Forbo, Mannington, and Harvey Maria promote their ability to add custom designs or images to existing product lines. For example, Forbo has established a digital library of surface patterns they can digitally print onto either their homogenous sheet vinyl or Flowtex flocked fabric flooring.

Engineered Floors claims its PureGrain HiDef line of luxury vinyl tile is the first U.S.-made product in which the décor layer and surface texture are digitally printed directly on the surface of the rigid core. They claim this direct-print process offers five times more clarity than digitally printed film.

Like the wallcovering industry, the flooring industry is open to innovative ideas. But, they may move more cautiously because the overall performance of the flooring material is paramount.

“Typically, what sells the product is both the substrate and the design. First, designers want to know that the flooring substrate can perform according to what the space requires,” says Dettoni. “Once an interior designer knows that a specific product will perform as needed, it’s all about good design.”

That doesn’t mean the flooring trends don’t evolve from the limited mix of patterns, colors, and textures that most flooring retailers offer. Some facility owners may prefer bold graphics, brand colors, or textured designs licensed from independent surface designers.

“Well-designed products in appropriate colors that are on trend help flooring suppliers sell products,” said Dettoni. Digital printing enables designers to deliver anything their clients might dream up without having an overwhelming amount of inventory.

“In the decor industry, customization was once only available for very large projects with big budgets,” notes Dettoni. “But that mindset is slowly changing as technology evolves. It’s an exciting time to be designing for this market.”