Purpose-built gym flooring is made of heavy-duty rubber and is laid on top of a building's subfloor as another layer of protection between your equipment and home.

It's typically sold in square-metre cuts, with various options when it comes to thickness and finish.

For most home builds, 20mm is ample. In uninsulated spaces and garages, we recommend upgrading to 30mm to experience less shrinking in the colder months, since temperatures on either end of the mercury affect how much the rubber contracts and expands.

There are two main finishes to gym flooring: plain black rubber, and easy-clean.

Black rubber is the traditional, no nonsense heavy-duty tiles that you probably think of when you picture gym flooring. They provide an exceptionally grippy surface, but are more prone to holding onto chalk and other stains that set in over time.

Over time, easy-clean alternatives have become increasingly popular. These have all the same benefits as the traditional black rubber tiles, but with a smooth EPDM surface which allows them to be, you guessed it, cleaned easily.

Black rubber

• ✓ Grippier underfoot
• ✓ More traditional look
• ✗ Holds onto chalk and wear more stubbornly

Easy-clean

• ✓ Smoother finish
• ✓ Wipes down easily
• ✗ More expensive than black rubber

Most customers go for the easy-clean finish, but if you want the traditional matte black look or simply want to keep costs down, then black rubber is a fine choice.

Tiling the whole room is always preferable, and we have a flooring calculator to work out exactly how many tiles you need to fill your space, even accounting for off-cuts. Having the full room covered means you can use every part of the space without feeling boxed in by a cut off point.

In order to keep costs down, some customers choose to only lay the flooring under the rack itself. In these cases, six tiles usually does the job, though you might want to bump this up to nine in order to perform cable flys and barbell exercises outside the rack without stepping off the flooring platform beneath it.

No. Our 20mm floor tiles weigh 17kg each, so they're heavy enough to stay put without needing any kind of adhesive. To add even more stability to the build, we supply connector pieces with all of our floor tile orders that link them together, building one solid grid.

Rubber gym flooring is durable by nature and pretty low maintenance.

The main care instruction is on where you lay it. You should avoid leaving it in direct sunlight or on underfloor heating. Both of these can damage the rubber over time.

Apart from that, all you need to do to clean your tiles is...

• 1 Hoover any grit or debris that's carried in from outside.
• 2 Mop them with warm water and a general floor cleaner.

That's it. Don't use any harsh chemicals and you'll keep your flooring in its best condition.

Round out your space with flooring corners and ramp edges for a cohesive, well-planned out flooring space.