Natural and Integrated Bevels

Bevels and Creating a Natural Look in your floors!

What really even is a bevel? Bevels are the pieces where the flooring planks connect with each other, sometimes bevels will even help make this connection more smooth and satisfying. Typically, it leaves a visible groove between the planks allowing for the connection between planks to look more natural and appealing. Bevels are also important due to the fact they can make cleaning espeically easier, not allowing dust to get into small cracks. Makes it easier to sweep away dust, keeping your home cleaener more effciently. Different manufacturers will have different types of these bevels, unique to their specific lines and types of flooring. Lets first explore the Shaw and COREtecs natural and integrated bevels!

A feature common in many floors but a type specific to COREtec and Shaw floors, is the integrated or natural bevel, it can elevate the sleekness of the overall design and look of a space. On top of purely aesthetics, bevels can help elevate the overall functionality of a floor, making it last longer by allowing for slight movements and expansions to become less noticeable or even concealing imperfections in the subfloor that would otherwise make the floor look less appealing or even ugly to others.

What are Shaw's Natural and Integrated Bevels?

Integrated and Natural Bevels are a part of Shaw and COREtec floors, these bevels are a special type of bevel found specifically in their products. They are mainly known for their pillowed edge and flawless look. It gives a subtle uplifting look to the planks, making the floors look more realistic at their connecting points. It makes the floor look more realistic and defined, appearing to be more like authentic wood. Most types of floors use bevels, also being found in engineered wood floors, hardwood, and luxury vinyl planks. Helping all types of floors create more definition within the floor along with allowing for a more aesthetically pleasing look to the floor as a whole with no largely noticeable gaps! Floors without bevels, their edges being called square edges, typically include gaps that aren’t super nice to look at, beveled flooring will effectively solve this grotesque issue.

Shaw and COREtec’s Integrated and Natural bevels have some of the highest quality bevels in the industry. So, what's actually the difference between the integrated and natural bevels? There isn’t one really, except that natural bevels belong to Shaw Products, while integrated bevels belong to COREtec’s line of manufacturing. While they do provide a lot of aesthetic functionality, they also have some practical uses. The natural and integrated bevels are especially useful compared to other bevels because they don't have as deep a groove, allowing for less dirt to get trapped. This particular type of shallow groove allows for easier cleaning than other floors with bevels.

Along with improving cleanliness, bevels can also make for a smoother installation because of their ability to hide small imperfections in the subfloor. These natural and integrated bevels make it a lot easier to do this compared to bevels from other manufacturers with deeper bevels, allowing for a forgiving margin.

Other Manufacter's Bevels 

Even though Shaw Flooring has a lot of great bevels, they are not an exclusive to their manufactering specifically. Bevels as a detail, infact, are getting a lot more popular and are very common in a lot of floors. While getting to know Shaw and COREtec's bevels is important, especially if youre considering buying their brands, it's also just as important to know how the bevels are for other manufacturers. Mohawk has very high quality and reliable floors, which is also shown in the great detail and care that is put into their bevels. Mannington, also, has some very notable bevels recently developed and included in their floors. 

While these bevels seem like a generally minute detail in your floors, these small differences between manufacturers respective bevels might help you make a decision on the floor that is perfect for you.

Mohawk's Bevels

Mohawk, another one of the big flooring manufacters, has many different styles of bevels suited to the preference of the customer. Their different types of bevels are displayed on the different lines of floors that they produce, but they are mainly for aesthetic purposes first. However, they still have the tactical benefits that come with hiding imperfections in the subfloor and others previously mentioned. Mohawk's specific bevel technologies are provided by Unilin. Unilin helps Mohawk's bevels achieve and provide an elevated, classy look to your floor. 

Mohawk's partnership with Unilin technologies give Mohawks flooring a few different options of bevels to use, including 5 special ones. They are referred to as, Micro Bevels, Lacqured Bevels, Pressed Bevels, FlinTile, and Matte Bevels. All of these bevels have slightly different aesthetic looks... you can learn more from Unilin's website here!

Mannington's Bevels

Mannington has relavitely similar bevels to other manufacturers, however they have recently came out with a new and unique bevel type. This new type of bevel is called their CraftedEdge™ Bevel, specially featured on their LVT Floors. This new bevel type has a distinctive rigid, maybe even some would call it a "groove-y" look. This type of bevel has a handcrafted edge, creating an incredibly luxurious look, for especially luxurious floors!

It's featured on Manningtons two new LVT lines, Regency and Calico in ADURA®Max and ADURA®Rigid. You can find more about Mannington's bevels here, on their website!

Further Questions? Here's an FAQ!

What's a bevel in flooring?
A bevel is a slight groove at the connecting points of each plank. It can define each plank, add visual interest, and mimic the look of natural hardwood. Along is visual aspects, it can also improve installation results and make your floor over all easier to clean.

What's the difference between square edge and beveled edge floors? 
Square edges are slightly less popular, they fit together tightly with no gap or groove, while beveled edges don't have a gap either, they do have a visible groove. This can help hide minor imperfections in the subfloor and make your planks look more defined.

What are Natural and Integrated Bevels?
Mostly the same, natural bevels are specific to Shaw floors while COREtec version of these bevels are specifically called integrated bevels. Though, both offer a shallow taper instead of a traditional groove, making it easier to clean the shallow design of the floor. These types of bevels may be also referred to as pillowed edges or bevels in a more general sense. Natural Bevel and Integrated Bevel are Shaw and COREtec's branded name for a "pillowed edge".

Are bevels only aesthetic? 
No. They improve durability and make some less than optimal subfloor imperfections less noticable. Some of them can also help make cleaning your floor easier. 

What makes Mannington’s CraftedEdge™ unique?
CraftedEdge™ is a newly developed bevel by Mannington, designed for their LVT floors. It features a more defined, “groove-like” look that gives the floor a handcrafted, maybe even "chiseled" appearance.

What is GenuEdge?
GenuEdge is Mohawk's Version of a 'Pillowed" edge, though it s a lot smaller than Shaw's and COREtec's version.

What is Mannington SculptedEdge™?
Similar to Shaw's Pillowed Edge in style and look, its another popluar bevel manufactured by Mannington allowing the SculptedEdge™ to create a soft and subtle look for the connecting joints.