floor covering

Finish material on floors, including wood strips, parquet, linoleum, vinyl, asphalt tile, rubber, cork, epoxy resins, ceramic tile, and carpeting. Wood-strip flooring, attached to a subfloor of plywood, is most popular, especially for residences. Vinyl tiles and sheets have displaced linoleum in most residential and commercial work. Nonslip rubber and cork are used for commercial and industrial applications. Terrazzo provides a hard, durable surface for public spaces. The Greeks used pebble mosaics as early as the 8th century BC. Tessellated pavement (mosaics of regularly shaped cubes) appeared in the Hellenistic Age and by the 1st century AD had come into popular use in and around buildings throughout the Roman empire. Inlaid stone, popular in Byzantine, Renaissance, and Gothic architecture, is now only occasionally applied in lobbies and entranceways of grand spaces.

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