It seems that suddenly, everyone is talking in the trade media about bamboo flooring. First there was the announcement last month that First Coast Fitness was one of the winners Les Mills’ Ultimate Studio Search, for their group exercise room that featured our Zenterra bamboo flooring. This month, Club Industry has an article entitled, “Green Flooring Programs Help Clubs with Sustainability”, which includes information on bamboo flooring, and OnSite Fitness Magazine will also be featuring it in their upcoming article, “Bamboo Flooring from A to Z.”
And just last week, one of the leading architects that serves the Fitness Industry remarked to me that “soon, every group exercise facility will have a bamboo floor in it.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it certainly was an assertive statement.
Why all the sudden interest in bamboo? I’d like to think that it’s because it’s something totally unique. For years, we’ve seen only hardwood floors in group exercise rooms. While they’re still attractive, bamboo offers a totally different aesthetic. The grains and streaks that we are familiar with in hardwoods are now replaced by “knuckles” and bands of color. It’s also a rapidly renewable resource that regrows to a height where it can be used again for flooring in just about 5 years, as opposed to a hardwood which requires 40 years or more to do the same thing.
Still, bamboo performs the same as hardwoods, is as easy to maintain as hardwoods, and is about the same price as most hardwoods. I could share more about the great properties of bamboo but, I’m sure that you’ve already seen them in any of the fitness publication that you read regularly….