BODYCARE’S SHEFFIELD COMEBACK LAUNCHED
Bodycare's relaunched store at The Moor in Sheffield needed 450 m² of herringbone LVT vinyl across its sales floor on a seven-day programme. Working with ARDEX, we laid the new floor over the existing ceramic tiles, saving the client time and cost and keeping the old floor out of a skip.
Why this space matters
It is the first branch in the retailer's planned high-street comeback after the business fell into administration and closed all 147 of its former stores, so the Sheffield store had more riding on it than a standard fit-out. The new site has a 'Bodycare Studio' format, with demonstration zones, big screens, and live broadcast studios, including a free-to-use TikTok studio where local creators can film and post from inside the shop.
Underneath all that, it's still a city-centre health and beauty store. The floor takes daily footfall and routine cleaning, and the herringbone pattern was part of Bodycare's new store identity from the outset.
This is not just a floor...
It’s where a new story is being told
The brief
Main contractor RCI Projects brought in Hull Flooring to install free-issue Karndean Opus luxury vinyl tiles in a herringbone pattern across 450 m² of sales floor. The scope also covered Commerce ribbed needlepunch entrance matting in the existing matwell and new PVC edge trims around the matwell and at the rear door. The programme was seven days, and the client was keen to bring time and cost down wherever there was a sound way of doing it.
Making it work
The unit already had a ceramic tiled floor. Taking it up would have meant breaking it out, disposing of the waste, and making good whatever was underneath, all before any vinyl went down, so we asked ARDEX's technical team whether the tiles could stay and become the base for the new floor instead. Together, we developed a preparation specification that allowed exactly that.
We cleaned the tiles with an alkaline surface cleaner diluted 1:3 with fresh water, and we filled any holes or missing tiles with ARDEX A 46 repair mortar. The whole area was then covered with up to 6 mm of ARDITEX NA latex smoothing compound. That's the surface the Karndean bonds to, and the ceramic is still beneath it.
Herringbone shows up every error in the setting out, and across 450 m² a couple of millimetres at the entrance turns into a line that wanders by the back wall. [Team input: where the setting out started, how the pattern was centred on the entrance or main aisle, and how the herringbone was finished at the matwell and perimeter.]
Leaving the old floor in place kept a full strip-out off the programme and saved the client what it would have cost, and none of it ended up in a skip.
The result
The floor was completed in seven days, with the herringbone running through the sales space as Bodycare intended. Mark Illingworth, the Director at RCI Projects, put it this way:
"The floor at Sheffield is looking great, one of the best installs I've seen for a long time."
At a glance
Client: Bodycare, The Moor, Sheffield
Sector: Retail (health and beauty)
Scope: Subfloor preparation over existing ceramic tiles, herringbone LVT installation, entrance matting and PVC trims
Size: 450 m2
Timing: Seven-day programme
Materials: Karndean Opus LVT (herringbone), ARDEX A 46 repair mortar, ARDITEX NA latex smoothing compound, Commerce ribbed needlepunch entrance matting
Outcome:
450 m² completed in seven days with the existing floor retained, cutting cost and programme time
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