The great popularity of carpet in churches sometimes makes us forget there are other ways to cover a surface that gets 90 percent of the wear in a building and claims up to 85 percent of a cleaning budget. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and each can be used most effectively in certain areas of a building.
Resilient flooring is the most common type of hard-surface flooring used in public buildings.
It may be the most expensive to take care of, but with proper care it will outlast carpeted surfaces by two to three times. Resilient tile floors have changed a great deal over the years. Later, tiles were manufactured of asbestos and vinyl. The newer tiles were less porous and flexible, but legislation against asbestos in the 1980s halted their production. The trend died in the early 1970s, due to the advent of asbestos and vinyl tile, but revived in the 1990s, partly because vinyl asbestos tile was outlawed and partly because of the undesirable byproducts of manufacturing plain vinyl tile.