Flooring Alternatives

Flooring Alternatives is a great resource for designers and consumers — I’ve had the pleasure of working with Mari multiple times on client projects for my job, and I’ve never been disappointed.
They are responsive, helpful and considerate. They have a wide variety of flooring and great resources to help you along the way!

Flooring Alternatives has the best selection of cork of all of the stores that I visited and did a great job leveling the floor in my old building and installing new cork.

I really had a good experience here!
What it is, is a small, helpful office, with one or two people around. When you enter they give you their total attention, and are willing to discuss what it takes to help you.
There is a variety of flooring, I am always drawn to Marmoleum. Anyway, I highly recommend it.

Mari was pretty nice and helpful while we selecting our floor and helped us identify attractive but not too expensive options. Be careful in choosing the amount of your order (do not rely on the staff to calculate it for you) and ask if there is any return policy that applies specifically to your particular order because the policy is different for different distributors that they sell.

I was interested in Marmoleum for my kitchen remodel. Flooring Alternatives had a great selection. Mari was very helpful and a pleasure to work with. By letting me use her computer, I accessed my email to get the designer’s specs which Mari used to calculate the number of squares per color for my design. Her math skills were amazing! The order was very accurate and I am very happy with the results. Mari was knowledgeable about the products and she provided wonderful customer service.

After we decided to replace the carpet in our loft with a new cork floor, we looked around for a company that was experienced with cork, including installation. Most flooring businesses that do cork treat it as a niche market, I suppose because it isn’t as common as other types of floors, and typically expect you to install it yourself.
We were drawn to Flooring Alternatives because cork seemed to be their specialty, and they’ve had years of experience with it, and had their own installers.
As other reviewers have already noted, Mari (the owner) as well as the staff, was very knowledgable and patient. Soon after we got the estimate from their in-​house installer, FA told us that they are no longer using an in-​house installer and our project would be turned over to an independent installer.
This of course raised a big red flag, but I trusted FA because I certainly didn’t know anything about picking an installer, and we really wanted to move forward. We ended up with Artex Flooring, Inc. who did an excellent installation job (for less money) with no additional delay. In fact, they finished ahead of schedule (3.5 days) and the result is fantastic.
We absolutely love our new cork floor, and would recommend Flooring Alternatives to anyone who is considering cork, or bamboo, or where environmental considerations are important. And it always feels good to work with a small local business that cares about their customers and takes pride in what they do.

I recently attended a workshop on installing floors at Flooring Alternatives. It was quite informative and the instructor answered all my questions thoroughly. They have a lot of different floors available. Wood, cork, Marmoleum, carpet. But it is all more eco-​friendly and less smelly. They had some great suggestions for our situation. The storefront still needs some work, because they just moved to a larger space, but I am sure that it will be spiffy soon. They are part of the Design Loop in Berkeley, which is where people go when they are working on their houses. It is really great that there are so many useful stores so close together. We also visited Omega Lighting and Omega Salvage during the same trip.

I own a third floor condo in a building whose regs require carpeting on every floor over the first. My shaggy collie sheds like crazy so I was able to get permission to replace the carpet with a cork floor, a product which is as sound absorbant and much cleaner and easier to maintain if considerably more expensive.
Given the expense, I was anxious that the replacement floor come out exactly right. Both Cynthia and Mari were extremely helpful and patient in answering my questions and providing samples through several months of decision making on my part. Their workers were prompt, careful and persevering and the look of the finished project was exactly what I was looking for.
Although a bit more expensive than some suppliers and installers, these folks know exactly what their doing. Flooring Alternatives was worth it. I am happy to give them a five star rating.

We recently bought a home in the Oakland Hills — and it was a fixer. The home is a 1940’s era Oakland home with great bones, but was in dire need of a makeover. One of the selling points for us was the original hardwood flooring. It was in pretty bad shape, but we thought they might look better with some work. We followed a contractor’s recommendation and called Cynthia at Flooring Alternatives.
They took the job with an honest and appropriate bid, and they were at work in a matter of days. It took just 1 week and the result was tremendous. The floors look beautiful, as if brand new. The first thing our guests say now when they enter our house is «Wow, the floors are beautiful!»
Even more impressively, during the middle of the job we decided to completely rip out and replace the kitchen flooring, which was rotted linoleum. They added the demo and floor installation quickly, on-​the-​fly, and added just one day to the total of the job.
The house, and kitchen, look great. We will definitely use the Flooring Alternatives team again. They are great, knowledgeable, trustworthy, and very nice.

I recently had a beautiful (Orosi) hardwood floor and bamboo floor installed by Flooring Alternatives. The installation was for a Master bedroom and large walk-​in closet as well as a Master bathroom.
They get 5 stars because they did everything exactly as expected and a couple of things better than expected. First, they started and finished the job on schedule. The floors were installed perfectly. In fact, where the hardwood and bamboo floors met (at the bathroom door) they were supposed to install a T-​molding to make the transition between the floors look clean. However, the installer was so good he did not need it. The two floors mated perfectly. It was a nice, unexpected touch.
Finally, after the job was completed, and I reviewed the work, there was some confusion between the installer and my general contractor about how the edge of the floor should meet the shower pan in the bathroom. Cynthia, who runs the installation business, came out and personally looked at the issue and had her team back on site to resolve it to my satisfaction. I appreciated her professionalism and willingness to make me happy without any fuss.
I am now having them refinish some other floors in the house.
(I also purchased the floors from Alternative Flooring as well. It was nice to have a full service shop.)

The staff is extremely knowledgeable, courteous, friendly, and very helpful. Wish they had more carpet alternatives, but I would definitely recommend working with them.

Mari was great. Very patient and knows her stuff. Our realtor re-​introduced us to her and turned us on to Marmoleum, an all natural linoleum for our kitchen floor. It looks and feels great under foot. Softer than tile for our kids and better suited to our wood cabinets than a wood or bamboo floor would be. Stays clean and looks sharp.
I was very very happy with our installer. He was second on Mari’s list but first class in my book. The seam between the two lengths is almost invisible, the floor and subfloor perfectly flat and his price reasonable. Tony Torres with Pinole Floor Coverings 510 758 0736.

It took me more than a year to decide what to put on the floor of my condo. Every month or so, I showed up here, and Mari always treated me graciously even though she was probably convinced that her time was being wasted on me. Like another reviewer wrote, she really knows her stuff. She steered me clear of certain options that she thought would not work in my situation. I ended up with a beautiful cork tile floor and I am very happy with it.
Don’t be fooled by the small sIze of the shop. It has the best selection of cork that I found, and a great variety of sustainable flooring.

Mari, the proprietor was quite helpful initially in helping us pick out some natural linoleum for our bathroom. She even allowed us to take home as many preview samples as we wanted (we live close by) and then bring them right back.
We placed an order with her for the material and the pricing was retail prices with no discounting which we were fine with. But there was also quite a high extra freight charge to have it delivered to the store, which surprised us.
We also felt that Flooring Alternatives could have been a bit more communicative about when our order would arrive and letting us know that it did. We had asked for them to call us as well as let the third party recommended installer know when it came in but they only called the installer so we were a bit out of the loop until the installer phoned us to schedule the install.
Since we had prepaid for the order, we should have been kept in the loop every step of the way but this is a pretty small complaint since in the end, the transaction work out. We did get the flooring on time and the order was correct.
In the future we feel comfortable using Flooring Alternatives again.

Mari was a joy to work with and was extremely helpful, talked me through all the options and gave me a crash course education on different types of flooring materials. Although I didn’t end up working with her for logistical reasons, I would be glad to buy from her in the future and I suggest everyone give her store a try.

In and out the door with our fabulous floating cork floor in less than 25 minutes at closing time! Mari was great & the selection of green flooring is as good as anything I found online.

We worked with Mari Strain. She had a connection with a contractor who had a LOT of reclaimed Fir T & G flooring. It was in good condition and worked out perfectly for our needs. Mari was VERY nice to work with and the contractor was also very helpful and flexible.

As part of our kitchen remodel we purchased new cork flooring from Flooring Alternatives. Sales, service, support and coordination with our installer was superb.