How to fix a tear in linoleum floor

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Vinyl Floor Repair
Split in Vinyl Flooring
Vinyl Floor Tear
Fixing a Hole in Your Vinyl
Vinyl Floor Bumps and Bulges

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Easy Advice is an online writer from the U.K. with over six years of experience writing DIY home-improvement content.

Vinyl Floor Repair

There is nothing more annoying than a split, tear, hole or bulge in vinyl flooring. It can appear irreparable, and the first thought for many would be that the whole thing needs replacing.

With a little care, most types of damage can be repaired. Here is how.

If you look, there is a split in the middle of the tile. We know it's there! Time to fix it.

Split in Vinyl Flooring

First, clean the area thoroughly. Dirt will have caught in the split itself, making it darker than the rest of the floor. The best way to clean it is to scrub it with a little hot water and washing-up liquid.
Allow it to dry thoroughly and then examine the damage.
If the split is a clean one, then the two halves can be joined back together; to do this you may have to soften the vinyl, which can be done with an ordinary household iron.
Heat it to its maximum temperature, cover the area of the split with a tea towel, and then press the iron onto the tea towel for about 10 seconds. Be very careful not to touch the floor with the iron directly, as the vinyl may melt.
When you lift the iron, quickly stretch the vinyl until it meets over the split and make sure it cools like that.
Once cool, use a flat-bladed knife to lift one side of the split, squirt a little superglue into the aperture, and quickly glue the vinyl down and back together, wiping any excess glue away carefully.
Within 10 minutes this should be good enough to walk on, but I wouldn’t wash it for 24 hours.

NB: If there is vinyl missing from the split, then a small shaving from a hidden area can be used as a patch and glued into place. The skill here is matching the sliver and flattening it completely into the gap, but it is possible with patience.

Vinyl Floor Tear

A tear is generally larger than a cut, but should be treated much in the same way as a split.

You can peel back the vinyl in the tear, clean both surfaces and dry thoroughly.
Use the iron trick to flatten the vinyl out, make sure the edges meet, and stick it down and together as before.

The basic vinyl flooring repair kit! An iron, a tea towel, sharp knife and a tube of superglue

Fixing a Hole in Your Vinyl

This works best with vinyl that is made to look like tiles, but it is possible with other designs. It requires spare vinyl being available, either the off-cuts or using some from somewhere else (under a kitchen unit for example), where it will not show if you take a square.

First clean the area of the damage, as before.
Then carefully cut out the square where the damage is (or if the pattern is not square, designate part of the pattern to be removed and replaced).
Cut the same sized and coloured square from the spare vinyl, try to be as exact as possible. Vinyl is quite a forgiving material and will flex if the gap and patch are a milimetre or so out.
Glue the patch into the hole being very careful that the edges are well glued down and not proud of the hole.

Vinyl Floor Bumps and Bulges

This is the easiest problem to fix—no matter how bad it looks, be it from furniture or kitchen appliances.

Carefully use a hot iron over a tea towel on the bulge to restore the vinyl to almost good as new.
Heat the iron to its hottest setting, lay your tea towel over the damage and firmly and slowly iron it out.
Make sure to put a weight on the bulge as it cools to make sure it stays flat.

This article is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge. Content is for informational or entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional advice in business, financial, legal, or technical matters.

Comments

marisd619 on October 16, 2018:

Thanks I think i will try now to fix my floor. You made it sound simple

Linoleum Repair | How to Repair a Tear in Linoleum

LESLIE: Beth in Georgia is up next and she’s got a floor issue. What’s happening?

BETH: Well, my husband and I just moved into a new house and we have linoleum floors in the kitchen and we noticed a tear at a pretty high-traffic area and we’d like to figure out how to repair it that it’ll hold until we can decide what kind of new floors we want to get.

TOM: Yeah, you know, fixing tears in linoleum is tough. There are glues that are available at flooring stores for this but usually what happens is a little piece of linoleum sticks up higher than the piece next to it and then you catch it with your feet or with furniture and things like that. And if you cut it out, even if you have a perfect repair – and I’ve seen professional linoleum repairs where they’re absolutely letter-perfect but still, you end up having that seam that collects dirt in the seam. So I guess the question here is, Beth, is how long are you fixing to get by with this linoleum being torn?

BETH: I’d say at least six months. I don’t see us changing the floors in a new house in the first six months.

TOM: Is a throw rug an option?

BETH: Could be, yeah. I mean, we could put a throw rug. We do have a dog who’s pretty active and likes to slide around the floor; that’s kind of an issue.

TOM: Wow.

LESLIE: So he could easily cut his paw.

BETH: So is there some – are there some glues that could hold it down so that if we wanted to put a throw rug over it or something, that could hold that piece down?

TOM: Yeah, Beth, it’s called repair adhesive and it’s available at most hardware stores. The secret to making this work, though, is to first of all clean the surface as best you can, work the adhesive under the entire space and then weight it for about 24 hours as it’s drying so it really holds that seam as flat as absolutely possible. And then once it’s dry, if you want to add a throw rug over it just to keep the direct traffic off of it, with all of those things that you’re doing, you should be able to buy yourself that six months you need to get to putting that new floor down. OK?

LESLIE: And then get one of those anti-skid mats so that your dog doesn’t come flying in and skid across that rug.