Homogeneous, heterogeneous and ESD flooring are all popular commercial vinyl flooring. Their main ingredient is polyvinyl chloride resin. Here we will introduce their differences in different aspects.

Structures & appearance

A flooring expert can tell each type of flooring with their colors and patterns, but distinguishing them by structures would be more accurate.

Homogeneous flooring is just one layer structure, and every thickness can be the same from top to bottom. Even the surface is worn, the color below is still the same.

Heterogeneous flooring is a multi-layer structure. Usually there are five layers, from top to bottom are UV layer, wearing layer, printing layer, glass fiber layer and backing layer. Its structure is more like LVT flooring.

ESD flooring is also a homogeneous structure, just a single layer. Compared with regular homogeneous flooring, it has conductive carbon black inside, this ensures the permanent conductivity and electronic resistance can reach 10^4-10^6Ω.

Size & thickness

Homogeneous and heterogeneous are both in roll form. Take 2mm as an example, their size can be 20m in length and 2m in width. ESD flooring has two types, one is also in roll form, and one is in tile form, tile sizes are 600mm, 610mm, 900mm.

As homogeneous and ESD flooring are single layer, their standard thicknesses are 2mm, 2.5mm and 3mm. Heterogeneous flooring is multi-layers, wearing layer and backing layer thickness can be customized, so thicknesses have more choices from 1mm to 5mm.

Colors & designs

Homogeneous and ESD flooring are made of PVC granules, granules in different colors are distributed uniformly. We can change the granules’ sizes, shapes and colors, to change the flooring designs, but in essence, the patterns are the collection of PVC particles.

Here heterogeneous flooring has much more colors and designs. The printing layer determines the flooring colors, while you can design any printing layer you want, like wood colors, stone colors, carpet colors, cartoon colors.

Applications & advantages

Both homogeneous and heterogeneous flooring are widely used in hospitals and schools. But homogeneous can be more popular in hospitals, as it is single layer structure, its antibacterial performance is excellent. Also its slight scratches can be polished and repaired, so its service life is long.

Heterogeneous flooring has better resilience, so it is more suitable for schools, especially kindergartens, when kids fall, the flooring can reduce the injury effectively.

ESD flooring keyword is ESD, which means electrostatic discharge. So it is used in places with anti-static requirements, such as clean rooms, electronic workshops, hospital operation rooms, data centers, etc.

Developments & prices

Vinyl flooring originated in Europe and America, and until now, almost all well-known brands are there, such as Gerflor, Tarkett, Armstrong, Polyflor. Until 2010, most vinyl flooring manufacturers were in Europe, but China’s vinyl flooring industry started to boom. In 2010, China’s vinyl flooring output was still 166 million square meters, but in 2020 this quantity came to 1,025 million square meters. The compound annual growth rate is 20% these ten years, which is crazy data.

Of course, most amount belongs to residential vinyl flooring, such as LVT, SPC, WPC flooring, but our commercial vinyl flooring also developed fast enough. Now the entire vinyl flooring industry in China is very developed. Some European and American brands have their own factories in China, most have their OEM in China.

Among these three types of flooring, homogeneous and ESD flooring are simple. We get your target thickness and we can supply prices. But for heterogeneous, except thickness, we also need to know wearing layer thickness, backing layer type and colors, then we can provide price. Here we all take 2mm as an example, heterogeneous flooring is USD4-5/sqm, homogeneous flooring price would be 30% more expensive, ESD flooring has the highest price, price would be around double than heterogeneous flooring.