Preparing for Autumn and Winter
3 Entrance Flooring tips to help prevent falls and slips
November 2020
Without a proper entrance flooring system, leaves, sand and dirt will find their way indoors and lead to scratches and wear and tear on your interior floor coverings. Intensively used floors – such as those in schools, shops, and office buildings – will consequently need replacing much sooner. And as beautiful as the autumn foliage is, leaves can become slippery underfoot when it rains, posing all kinds of risks for people entering or leaving the building. So here are our top 3 tips for designing an effective entrance flooring system to help keep the outside from getting in.
Quick fixes
You could resort to quick fixes for your foliage, rain, and dirt problem by using a loose moisture-absorbent mat with beveled edges in your entrance area, for example. But how safe is that? You could have someone wipe and mop the floor constantly, but is that really a long-term solution? And placing a ‘Caution, wet floor’ sign on the floor is an easy visual solution, but does it actually solve the problem? After all, the floor remains wet and dirty.
With our Coral and Nuway entrance systems you can have fully integrated, design led and functional entrances to your building that will stand up to the test of time, and the good old British winter weather!
Tip 1: create zones
Having an effective entrance flooring system in place can protect the entire building from wear, dirt, and even dangerous situations. Our first tip: create different entrance flooring zones that work together.
Start with a first line of defence by placing a rigid entrance mat with wiper strips and scraper bars, such as our Nuway solutions, outside. This will protect against soil, leaves, and the coarsest of foot-borne dirt before they cross the threshold.
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Tip 2: have them work together
The ideal entrance flooring system actually consists of not one, but two areas of matting, which together form a system.
Tip number two: make sure you have a high-quality mat system in place in the second zone – usually a hallway or covered outside space as people start to move in to the building – to remove foot-borne moisture and finer dirt particles.
Our Coral collection of textile entrance systems provides the ideal solution in these areas. Because every entrance is a unique environment, each range in the collection has been specially designed to interact with different soiling behaviour, delivering superior performance in the toughest of environments.
Tip 3: don't forget the rest
Our third tip: don’t neglect the other areas in the building. Reception areas, corridors, walkways to other parts of the building, elevators, staircases and exits all get exposed to dirt and moisture.
These areas will be prone to residual soiling and will benefit greatly from a purposely designed textile entrance mat to absorb this soiling. Ultimately, this will result in less cleaning and prolong the floor’s lifespan.
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Quality and design freedom
Well thought-through entrance flooring systems provide optimal protection. Whether it’s a rigid first line of defence, like our Nuway range, or a textile clean-off system such as Coral matting, our entrance flooring is designed to stop up to 95% of dirt and moisture from entering the building – which in turn helps to reduce trips and slips. Better still, cleaning costs can be cut by up to 65%.
You want your entrance flooring to do its job. But you also want it to be easy to clean, look good and match your interior and decor. Different colours, personalized branding, logos, or even wayfinding options; it’s all possible.
Want to find out more about our Coral and Nuway entrance system solutions?View our online brochure