Broadleaf Insights

Next Generation Magnetic Wood Flooring in Workspace

Our Magnetree magnetic wood flooring is a new generation system that enables our beautiful wood floors to be fitted over magnetically receptive subfloors without adhesive, so they can be easily lifted and relaid. Read on to find out why this is potentially such good news for the environment and the future of wood flooring in workspace.

Wood flooring in workspace

What is so good about Magnetic wood floors?

Those looking to build sustainable workspace have been advocating for magnetic wood floors for a while now, and it’s easy to see why. Wood floors create a naturally inviting working environment and promote a sense of well-being, both of which are central to modern workspace design. A magnetic fixing is a clean and easy way to fit to the metal raised access subfloors found in most large office buildings and enables crucial access to the services beneath.

Better still, in a world where genuine sustainability is increasingly important and the ability to disassemble and reuse is a growing priority across the construction industry, magnetic wood flooring can be removed without damage to the subfloor and reused. Over a 20 year period in a commercial setting, this can reduce the amount of embodied carbon by more than 500% and reduce costs by two thirds.

Plank and parquet floors are both beautiful, but if you like both and don’t know which to choose, the following might help you.

Plank floors are quicker and easier to install than parquet, which means that they will be less expensive to install. They are also a simpler DIY option. That said, parquet floors have an undeniable wow factor, and create a feature all on their own. This is one of the reasons that they are such a popular choice for hallways, which can often be difficult to furnish due to their size and the need to be able to move through them freely.

Herringbone parquet is also a great solution for unusually shaped rooms such as L shapes or those entered from more than one direction, as the pattern works both ways, whereas plank floors tend to look better in one direction or another.

Plank and parquet floors are both beautiful, but if you like both and don’t know which to choose, the following might help you.

Plank floors are quicker and easier to install than parquet, which means that they will be less expensive to install. They are also a simpler DIY option. That said, parquet floors have an undeniable wow factor, and create a feature all on their own. This is one of the reasons that they are such a popular choice for hallways, which can often be difficult to furnish due to their size and the need to be able to move through them freely.

Herringbone parquet is also a great solution for unusually shaped rooms such as L shapes or those entered from more than one direction, as the pattern works both ways, whereas plank floors tend to look better in one direction or another.

Why Not everyone is using magnetic wood floors

So why isn’t everyone doing it? The truth is that, like most innovations, magnetic wood flooring has had some teething problems. Many of these have been blamed on contractors, and the result is that sadly most are now wary of magnetic wood flooring and reluctant to embrace this potentially revolutionary way of fitting wood floors in commercial spaces despite the enthusiasm of specifiers.

This reminds us of the early days of underfloor heating, when everyone seemed to have a disaster story about combining it with wood flooring. As one of the few pioneers who were succeeding, Broadleaf had a daily battle to convince contractors that if the product and the preparation were right, it would work. We worked in partnership with underfloor heating suppliers to understand their systems and help them understand wood. We improved the information available to help people avoid the pitfalls and shared our success stories, as did others. Gradually, laying wood floors over underfloor heating became normal, so that these days it’s something that most contractors do regularly without a second thought.

NEXT GENERATION MAGNETIC WOOD FLOORING

Now, we hope to do the same thing with magnetic wood flooring. We’ve been researching, developing and testing magnetic wood floors for nearly a decade, combining our knowledge as a wood flooring manufacturers with insights from contractors and magnet experts. The result is Magnetree, which is not just magnetic wood flooring, but a complete magnetic installation system that can be applied to our entire range of wood floors. Magnetree has been designed with contractors in mind: there are no added complications with expansion gaps, it doesn’t require fiddly machining on site to create access hatches, or detailed mapping to identify their location, it retains full horizontal integrity and is designed not to track. It’s been designed by wood people, for wood people.

Whilst we know that we won’t convince everyone straight off the bat, and nor do we expect to, we very much hope that even those who’ve had a bad experience with magnetic wood flooring before can be persuaded that Magnetree will work, just like our floors for underfloor heating always have despite the cynics. Using magnetic wood floors to replace adhesive as standard in workspace would make a huge difference to the environment over the next 20 years, not to mention enabling us to reuse and recycle thousands of m2 of wood and metal rather than them ending up in landfill. It could reduce embodied carbon per m2 by over 500%. That’s got to be an ambition we can all share.

Watch our demonstration videos to see for yourself how Magnetree is different and why it is leading the next generation of magnetic wood floors

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