Flooring Compared: Parquet, Natural Stone, Ceramic and Terrazzo for Daily Life

Why the floor question comes first

The floor is the largest continuous surface in an apartment. It determines how light is reflected, how loud footsteps sound and how warm a room feels, long before a single piece of furniture is in place. That is why, in every overall concept, we treat it as the base tone and not as a choice made afterwards from a sample case.

There is also a practical sequence to respect. Build-up heights, thresholds, doors, underfloor heating and fitted units all depend on the floor. Order the kitchen first and choose the flooring afterwards, and you quickly end up with a plinth panel that no longer fits or a sliding door hanging over an edge. For more on how a continuous floor connects rooms, see our article on one floor for every room.

A floor is the only surface you touch every single day without thinking about it. That is exactly why it has to be right.

For our couple in Wieden, the first question was therefore not "oak or stone?" but: where is the cooking done, where do people walk, where do they stand barefoot? The kitchen becomes the centre, the living room the quiet counterpoint, the hallway an airlock for street shoes and wet umbrellas.

Leaving the floor to chance has a cost you pay in daily life: a cold kitchen floor at six in the morning, echoes in an open room, three surfaces and four thresholds that cut every room in two. And a floor is the hardest thing to change later, because everything built on it has to be lifted with it. So which material belongs where?

Parquet: warm, quiet and repairable

Parquet is almost a reflex in the Viennese Altbau, and for good reason. Wood feels warm, muffles footsteps and ages with dignity. Solid plank or strip parquet can be sanded back several times, and small blemishes disappear at the next renovation. With multi-layer parquet, the number of possible sandings depends on the thickness of the wear layer.

The species shapes the character. Oak is robust, readily available and, as a rule, copes well with underfloor heating when the parquet is bonded over its full surface. Walnut looks darker and calmer, but it is softer and shows dents more readily. Ash is pale with a lively grain. How these woods change over the years is described in detail in our piece on solid wood in interior fit-out.

The limits are just as clear. Wood does not forgive standing water, and a leaking dishwasher can make the strips swell. Oiled finishes are easy to repair but need care. Lacquered finishes are easier to look after but can only be touched up over a large area. Even so, parquet works in an open kitchen if you plan deliberately around the sink and keep up the oiling regularly. But what if the room needs something more robust?

Ceramic: robust and ideal for underfloor heating

Ceramic tiles have made an enormous leap in recent years. Large formats of 120 by 120 or 120 by 260 centimetres, matt surfaces reminiscent of stone or concrete, and very low water absorption make porcelain stoneware the workhorse among floor coverings. It is scratch-resistant, stain-resistant and colourfast.

For underfloor heating, ceramic is almost ideal, because it conducts heat well and needs hardly any build-up height. If you are thinking about surface heating or even cooling, you will find the connections in our article on heating and cooling through surfaces.

The price of this robustness is hardness. Unheated, ceramic is cool underfoot, and it throws sound back. A dropped glass rarely survives. In large open rooms a pure ceramic floor can echo, so you will need textiles, upholstered furniture or acoustically effective surfaces. How large-format tiles with few joints look in practice is shown in our piece on large-format ceramic in the bathroom. Which brings us to a material with more character, and more rules.

Natural stone: depth with character

Natural stone is not a single material but a family with very different properties. Granite and many quartzites are hard and acid-resistant. Marble and limestone contain calcium carbonate and react to acids such as lemon juice, vinegar or red wine with dull marks. That is not a flaw but chemistry, and you should know it before you choose.

What stone offers, no other material can imitate: real depth, a surface that comes alive in raking light and a patina that can grow more beautiful over the years. Honed or brushed finishes are usually better suited to everyday living than high-gloss polished ones, because signs of wear are less noticeable.

In an Altbau, stone always raises the question of weight. Many Viennese Gründerzeit buildings (the late nineteenth-century apartment blocks) have timber-beam or "Dippelbaum" ceilings, made of closely laid solid beams, which can take additional loads only to a limited extent. Whether a natural stone floor in a mortar bed is possible, or whether a thinner, bonded version makes more sense, is something we clarify with the structural engineer. Which stones work in wet areas is covered in our article natural stone in the bathroom. And Vienna has an older answer still.

Terrazzo: the Viennese classic returns

Terrazzo is familiar from Gründerzeit stairwells and from coffee houses. It consists of stone aggregate in a binder, is ground and sealed. It comes either as a floor cast on site with few joints or as prefabricated tiles.

Cast terrazzo is impressive: one continuous surface with no visible joint grid, extremely long-lived and re-grindable. But it needs movement joints, careful planning of the substrate and time, because it has to cure and be ground several times. Weight and build-up height are again an issue in an Altbau. Terrazzo tiles are easier to plan for, but show a joint pattern. You will find more on the history and the possibilities in our piece on terrazzo for floors and washbasins. So how do all four compare side by side?

The comparison at a glance

The table summarises the most important properties. It is no substitute for sampling, but it helps to find a first direction.

When it comes to cost, the spread within each category is greater than the difference between categories. A basic porcelain stoneware and a large-format premium product are far apart, as are an industrial engineered parquet and hand-laid herringbone. Reliable figures only exist after measuring up and checking the substrate, because levelling, waterproofing and build-up often cost more than the material itself. The harder question is how many floors one apartment can take.

How many floors can an apartment take?

The honest answer: fewer than most people assume. Three different floors in one apartment is usually the maximum; two often look calmer. Every change creates an edge, a threshold strip or a joint, and each of them visually cuts up the room.

For our couple in Wieden, the solution lay in a clear division into two. Throughout the living and sleeping areas, a new oak parquet will be laid in a herringbone pattern, picking up the character of the old floor. In the kitchen, hallway and bathroom goes a large-format, warm grey ceramic whose tone suits the oiled oak. The transition between kitchen and living space is not in the doorway but where the cooking island ends. In this way the change of floor becomes zoning, not an interruption. How to divide open areas without building walls is shown in the article kitchen, dining, living: zones instead of rooms.

Imagine the finished apartment at seven. You cross barefoot from the bedroom into the living room over warm oak herringbone, where the sun touches the grain. At the island the ceramic changes the sound underfoot exactly where the kitchen begins.

The change between two floors is a decision about rooms, not about materials.

This logic belongs in the materials concept: floor, fronts, worktops and wall finishes are sampled together, in daylight and in artificial light, side by side on a table. So how do you decide, step by step?

A decision aid in five steps

If you are facing the choice, you can follow a simple sequence. It is the same one we use on projects.

1. Describe the use. Where is the cooking done, where do the children play, where do people walk barefoot? Are there pets, small children, guests in street shoes?
2. Check what is there. What ceiling lies underneath, how much build-up height is available, is there an old floor worth keeping?
3. Settle the services. Is underfloor heating coming? Will the rooms be cooled? Where do the pipes run?
4. Limit the number of floors. Where do changes make sense, and where do continuous surfaces connect?
5. Sample on a large scale. Do not decide from hand samples, but from sample tiles of at least half a square metre, in your own light.

With an Altbau, it is worth establishing early on whether an existing parquet can be saved. Often there is a floor under a carpet or laminate that looks better after sanding than any new installation. Why the charm of an Altbau is better served by an overall concept than by piecemeal work is explained in our piece on the Altbau apartment in Vienna. If you are unsure whether your Altbau floor can be saved, the first conversation is free: 30 minutes by phone or video, without obligation. Whatever you choose, how will it age?

Care and ageing: what counts after ten years

Every floor ages. The question is whether it gains character in the process or simply looks worn. Oiled parquet acquires a patina and can be reworked locally. After ten years ceramic looks almost as it did on the first day, which some see as an advantage and others as coldness. Natural stone develops a soft surface, and marble shows use more clearly. Terrazzo can be re-ground after decades and then looks fresh again.

Picture the floor in ten years' time: a soft patina in the oak where the sun falls, the ceramic much as on the first day, and the mat in the hallway having done its quiet job.

In everyday life it is the small things that count. A walk-off mat zone in the hallway protects every floor from sand and grit from winter gritting. Felt glides under chairs prevent most scratches in parquet. On natural stone, impregnation helps to prevent stains, but does not replace wiping up quickly. You will find honest assessments of surfaces that still look good after years in the article Easy to clean? Surfaces rated honestly.

Acoustics also change with the floor. Anyone switching from carpet to ceramic suddenly hears every footstep and every conversation more loudly. This can be compensated for, but it should be part of the planning and not something noticed only after moving in. Background on this is provided by our piece on acoustics in open-plan living. And where the floor meets the fitted units, the details decide.

Where the floor meets fitted units

An underestimated point is whether fitted units stand on the finished floor or the floor is laid around them. With a fitted kitchen or a floor-to-ceiling wardrobe, this is decided early, because it affects plinth heights, access hatches and later alterations. As a rule we plan so that the flooring runs through under kitchens and cabinets, so that a later conversion does not leave a gap in the floor.

For kitchens and bathrooms we coordinate floor and fitted units in one go, with one person in charge and the units made by our joinery Tischlerkultur, family-run since 1935. You will find more on these services on the pages about fitted kitchens and bathroom renovation. How different floors look in real projects is shown in our references.