BLOG & NEWS
Why Are Airport Floors Polished So Smooth?
Airport floors are polished so smooth mainly for appearance, durability and ease of cleaning. Polished stone, terrazzo and similar surfaces look bright and premium, stand up to heavy footfall and wheeled luggage, and are quick to maintain at scale. But smooth does not automatically mean slippery. Whether a polished floor is safe depends on its measured slip resistance, particularly when wet, and that cannot be judged by how the floor looks.
The short why
A terminal is a showcase, a workhorse and a cleaning challenge all at once. Operators want floors that look good on day one, survive years of heavy use and can be cleaned quickly around passengers. Polished surfaces do those jobs well. The trade-off is that a very smooth finish can offer less grip, especially once water is involved.
What are the common reasons for choosing polished floors?
Several practical and commercial reasons tend to sit behind the choice:
- Appearance: a polished floor reflects light and gives a clean, high-quality impression to arriving and departing passengers
- Durability: hard materials cope with constant footfall, trolleys and wheeled luggage
- Cleaning: smooth, dense surfaces are generally quicker to clean and do not hold dirt in the way a rough texture can
- Longevity: a well-chosen hard surface can last many years in a high-traffic setting
None of these reasons is unreasonable. The problem is that appearance and ease of cleaning are easy to specify and easy to see. Grip is neither. It is invisible, and it is rarely the first thing anyone judges a floor by.
Does polished always mean slippery?
No, and that point matters. Slip resistance depends on the material, the finish, the condition of the surface and what is on it. Some polished or honed surfaces perform well. Others perform poorly, particularly when wet.
This is the belief worth challenging directly. A floor that looks clean and gleaming is not necessarily a floor that is safe. Looks clean does not mean safe, and the only way to know is to test. Two floors that look almost identical can behave very differently underfoot, and a floor that performed well when new can change as it wears.
Why does wet weather make polished floors riskier?
Water forms a thin film between the sole of a shoe and the floor. On a smooth surface, there is little texture to break through that film, so friction can drop sharply. In an airport, wet conditions are common. Rain and melted snow come in on shoes, coats and luggage, particularly around entrances, arrivals and baggage reclaim.
Footfall adds to this. Years of feet and wheels can wear a surface smoother still, in the places where people walk most. A floor with good grip when installed can lose it gradually, without any visible change.
How does CHIMES help explain the risk?
The CHIMES framework shows why a polished floor is only one part of the picture:
- Contamination: rainwater, spilled drinks and cleaning residue on the surface
- Heel: the footwear of passengers, which varies hugely and cannot be controlled
- Individual: hurried, tired or distracted passengers pulling luggage and watching departure boards
- Maintenance: cleaning products and methods, since the wrong approach can leave a residue that lowers grip
- Environment: weather coming in, lighting, ramps and transitions between wet and dry areas
- Surface: the floor material, its finish and its current measured slip resistance
A polished surface is the “S” in CHIMES. It raises the importance of managing the other five, because there is less margin for error when conditions go wrong.
How do you know whether a polished floor is safe?
By measuring it. Slip resistance is assessed using pendulum testing, the method preferred by the HSE and relied on in UK slip litigation. It swings a rubber slider across the floor to mimic a heel strike and produces a Pendulum Test Value (PTV). A PTV of 36 or above is generally regarded as low slip potential. Below that, risk rises as the number falls.
Testing should be done wet as well as dry, because a dry reading says little about how a polished floor will behave in the rain. Slip Safety Services has found that organisations who measure first and then act on what they find see a 57%+ average reduction in slip incidents, because the fix is matched to the real cause rather than assumed.
If a zone tests poorly, the answer is not always to replace the floor. In many cases, the surface can be treated to improve its grip, while keeping the look that was chosen for the terminal.
What to do about it
Identify the zones in your terminal that are most likely to be wet: entrances, arrival routes, baggage reclaim, areas near food and drink outlets and toilets. Find out when each was last tested, and whether the reading was taken wet as well as dry.
If you are specifying a new floor or planning a refurbishment, ask for slip resistance data under wet conditions alongside the look and the cleaning requirements, and plan to re-test once the floor is in use. Where there is no recent, dated reading, treat that as the first gap to close.
Next step
If you are not sure how your terminal’s polished floors perform when it rains, the Slip Prevention Scorecard takes a few minutes and gives you a clear starting point. For the fuller method behind measuring, improving and proving floor grip, Slipology by Christian Harris covers the process in depth.
Related questions
- Why do train station floors get so slippery in wet weather?
- Managing slip risk at airport terminals: does cleaning more help?
- What is a safe PTV (pendulum test value)?
- Wet vs dry slip resistance: why does testing both matter?