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Why Stretched Ceilings are Perfect for Wet Rooms

Why Stretched Ceilings are Perfect for Wet Rooms

Bathrooms, spas, and pool rooms pose a special challenge to owners, designers, decorators and renovators, and that special challenge is water. Plaster and drywall have never been such widely used building products for their water resistance. They became so popular more for the fact that they don’t burn easily.

Laqfoil membranes also don’t burn easily, having fire safety ratings of class 1 (CAN-S102 & ASTM-E84), but in addition, they resist and contain water and moisture. The only porous membranes are specially made for sound attenuation with intentional perforations. Those not made for sound attenuation (recommended for wet rooms) still attenuate sound, because sound waves cause them to move, changing sound energy to kinetic energy.

If your wet room has previous damage, either to the paint or to the wall, a stretched ceiling can cover it up, making the ceiling or wall look perfectly flat and smooth. Although mold will be sealed in and starved for moisture, we do recommend cleaning the wall with an anti-fungal disinfectant just once before the membrane is installed to be sure that the spores are completely gone. It’s a good idea to remove any large paint or wallpaper peels as well, as the membrane normally sits as little as 23 mm from the existing wall or ceiling. That’s all the preparation you need to do! Our installers come and install tracks around the edge of the area to be covered, tuck the edges of the membrane into the tracks, and then heat the membrane so that it stretches tight and smooth. They don’t generally need to move furniture out of the room, and don’t make any more dust than the drilling of a few small holes produces. There are no fumes to the process.

The fact that the installation process only involves the edges of a ceiling becomes really important if your wet room is a swimming pool room. There is no need to drain the pool, add ventilation to help the paint dry, or otherwise interrupt your daily operations. If it’s a commercial pool, you might want to shut down for the installation, but the largest ceilings that we have installed have all gone up within a day or 2, usually less.

Commercial operations like hotels, spas, and fitness facilities often depend upon their image to keep business running smoothly, so it is recommended within these fields that owners plan in advance to freshen the look of their facilities relatively frequently, like about once every two years. Changing a membrane is a snap, and can really dramatically shift the overall look of a place.

Picture not only changing the colour, but going from a straight colour to a printed graphic or photo, and changing from flat to gloss, or from gloss to flat. Going from the lightest colours to the darkest or vice-versa carries no concerns about coverage or streaking! Only the old membrane would need to be removed, and the same tracks could be used for the new one. Our tracks come in aluminum and plastic, neither of which rust, and both of which, like the membranes, can be recycled indefinitely. We also have metallic foil membranes, and the membranes can be bonded together in artistic ways to create large areas of different colours like stripes, a sweeping curve, or colour blocks.

Just picture never having to think about peeling paint or wallpaper, loose or falling tiles, or nasty little black spots ever again, and at the same time, adding all the creative Wow! Factor you wish, with no muss and no fuss – and what you’re imagining is a stretched ceiling!

–Esther Yates-Abrams

20 Magnetic Dr. Unit 2, info@laqfoil.com, www.laqfoil.com, 1-888-663-1708, 416-663-1708