Selecting Outdoor Kitchen Flooring

By Rose Kennedy

When you've already used stone or brick in other outdoor rooms or landscaping, it's also important to choose an outdoor kitchen floor that either matches or complements the style of those features.

Here are some of Scott's favorite style-flooring material matchups:

Contemporary: Slate or cast-concrete tiles designed to be outdoors, such as Cal-Ga-Crete or clean, washed concrete in integral colors

Tuscan style: Tumbled pavers, unhoned travertine, deep-washed exposed aggregate or stone-texture stamped concrete

English/Traditional: Brick or darker flagstones, washed concrete or stamped cobblestone concrete

Tropical: Flagstone or faux rock, texture-stamped concrete

Old World: Repurposed brick, exposed aggregate, Windsor Cobblestone texture stamps, fleur-de-lis and grapevine borders

Placement and Maintenance
There's also a knack to placing the flooring, says Scott: "I like to lay out outdoor living space into different rooms. To help enhance the feeling of being in a separate outdoor kitchen, I will often change up the flooring in that space or even add separate steps up or down."

Scott also recommends using stamps such as vintage grapevine detail or fleur-de-lis patterns to create a frame around the outdoor kitchen space. "That can really help define the space in the same way an area rug does indoors," he says.

For that matter, Scott says, you may want to consider one of the many area rugs designed specifically for outdoor use. "There are now a great variety of them and a lot of them are great-looking," he says.

Appearance aside, take a couple of practical steps to make sure your outdoor floor lasts a long, long time, he says. "Be careful to select a stamp pattern that's not too deep to drain or to allow you to set outdoor furniture level on top of it," he says. "And be sure to apply a good-quality penetrating sealer around any floor that's in the cooking or dining areas to protect your flooring from oil and wine spills."

Resources

The Green Scene

Fogazzo Wood Fire Ovens and Barbecues

Cal-Ga-Crete concrete tiles and veneers