What Floor is Right For You

Choosing the Right Dance Floor

If you’re opening a new dance studio, remodeling a stage or need a touring floor, Stagestep offers abundant options to tailor a floor system ideally suited to your needs.

 

Our Dance Floor Options

*Sound reduction produces less than performance quality results

**With the use of FloorShield

 

Most of our flooring options are made from Marley vinyl, but they all have different qualities:

• Timestep are great multipurpose floors that handle all dance styles including tap.
• Bravo Dance Floors are lightweight, reversible, and economical.
• Dancestep Plus is a dual density foam-backed floor that is installed directly on a concrete or hard surface.
• Rave is lightweight, portable, very economical and comes in a variety of colors.
• Quietstep is ideal for ballet and contemporary. This flooring reduces sound and has a cushioned backing.
• Woodstep gives the look of real wood without the higher cost and maintenance. It resists wear with its heavy-duty construction.
• Encore Hardwood  is a true hardwood dance floor, made from maple or oak hardwood with an integrated sprung subfloor. Ideal for ballroom and tap.

What to Consider When Choosing a Stage or Studio Floor

When looking for the floor system that meets your needs, first consider how it will be used: What type of dance will it accommodate? How often will it be used? Will there be other activities on it? The answer to these questions, with the help of a Stagestep representative, will narrow down the options that will work for you.

If you have a multi-use space, Timestep over a Springstep IV may be the best choice. Ballet studios would be more interested in the Super Bravo Collection paired with a floating wood subfloor. Stagestep also offers transportable and permanent hardwood floors. They are best suited for tap and ballroom.

Absorption of Energy

All movement activity generates energy. Energy directly returned to the body can result in shin splints, back and knee problems, fatigue, strains, and even broken bones. A non-energy absorbent floor or flooring system is dangerous. It can result in injury and law suits. Concrete is non-energy absorbent. Any substance put directly on concrete does not remove you from the concrete unless it contains air (like foam). Basket weave and foam sprung floating subfloors provide shock absorbent characteristics that eliminate the problems associated with hard, non-absorbent floors.

No floor can be the most absorbent and the most resilient at the same time. There is only so much energy and it can only be diffused in varying relationships of absorption and resilience. We call that “feel” and it affects performance. Different surfaces and subfloors have different “feels,” each appropriate for different styles of dance.

Lateral Foot Support

Perhaps the most overlooked attribute of a floor is lateral foot support. Without lateral foot support, you cannot maintain balance. Today, the leading cause of injury is not shin splints but ankle injury, due in part to flooring systems that rely solely on absorbent materials or systems that are too spongy. A term you may come across is point elastic, meaning deflection of the floor at the point of impact. The greater the deflection, the more unstable the floor.

 

Warning:
Any floor / floor system that you can squish together in your hands (feels soft) can be dangerous due to lack of lateral foot support.

Resilient Energy

In addition to absorbency, energy can be dissipated by resiliency — think of a diving board or trampoline. Energy transfers from the body to a subfloor that deflects and safely returns energy (spring). Wood is the best of the resilient materials.

Non-Slip

Safety is the number one issue with dancers and their teachers when it comes to floors. The first safety concern is the non-slip characteristic of the surface. Ballet dancers need very non-slip surfaces while contemporary dancers in bare feet need smooth giving surfaces so the floor does not cause injury to the bottom of their feet. Tappers need some give, yet also need the assurance under foot of a surface they can slide on. Ballroom and theatre dance require a “fast” (less non-slip) surface. What to do?

In an ideal world, each dance discipline would have its own unique floor surface. Since this is unlikely, Stagestep™ offers floors that can be “adjusted” to meet the average needs of different dance disciplines. We also have finishes and treatments that can modify a floor surface to be more accommodating to other dance styles.

Safety and Shock Absorbency

The second safety concern dancers have is the ability of the floor to absorb and dissipate energy, and / or safely return energy (resilient energy). If the floor fails to absorb or safely return energy, the body becomes the shock absorber, resulting in fatigue, pain, and injury. A performer’s nemesis is concrete or any other surface that is hard and unyielding.

The guaranteed way to get injured is to work on an unyielding, non-shock absorbing flooring system. Concrete is your enemy. Stagestep™ features roll out floors and subfloor systems that protect the body from stress fractures, excessive fatigue, and joint stress.

The Best Floors for Different Dance Styles

Dance studios see a lot of different styles, all with different techniques and requirements. Many of our floors are suitable for all kinds of dances, like our multi-purpose Timestep floors. We also have more specialized types of dance floors, like Quietstep, which absorbs sound, making it ideal for more delicate, lighter dancing types like ballet.

 

Contact us at Stagestep™ to find the right stage flooring for your needs. Once we learn more about what type of floor you are looking for, we can help choose the right option for your studio or stage. We understand each of our clients are different, which is why we want to match everyone with the right product.

 

 

Flooring: Primary Use

Floor Surfaces	Ballet	Tap	Hip-Hop Modern	Jazz	Theatrical, Folk, Ethnic	Character	Ballroom	Multi-Purpose
Bravo Classic	E	X	I	I	G	VG	G	C
Dancestep Plus	VG	X	E	E	VG*	VG*	G	G
Encore / Encore Elite	C**	I	I	I	I	I	I	VG
Encore Home	C**	I	I	I	I	I	I	VG
Permanent Flooring Systems	E**	I	I	I	I	I	I	E
Ovation	E	X	I	I	X	X	C	X
Quietstep	I	X	E	I	G*	G*	G	G
Rave	E	X	I	I	I	X	C	X
Super Bravo	E	X	I	I	G	G	G	C
Super Timestep	I	E**	E	I	I	I	E**	E
Timestep	VG	I	I	E	I	I	E	I
Timestep T	VG	I	I	E	I	I	E	I
Woodstep	VG**	VG**	VG	E	I	I	VG	E
Woodstep Plus	VG**	X	E	E	VG*	VG*	G	VG
Woodstep Ultra	VG**	X	E	E	VG*	VG*	G	I
I = Ideal		E = Excellent		VG = Very Good			G = Good
C = Conditional				X = Not Recommended

Dance Floors with Foam Backing

Stagestep™offers three rollout marley-type floors that have heavy-duty wear surfaces and high-density foam underlayment. They can be installed directly over concrete and have very good absorbency, excellent performance, but reduce the level of sound generated. They are rated ideal for residual vibration and are excellent multi-purpose use flooring.

Woodstep Plus and Woodstep Ultra are available in a woodgrain pattern. Dancestep Plus is available in black or grey. Encore, our hardwood flooring system, also has a built-in floating wood subfloor.

Subfloor: Performance & Characteristics

Floating Wood Subfloors

Stagestep™ offers a variety of floating wood subfloors (with customized variations) to absorb, dissipate, and provide safe resilient energy return. All floor surfaces without foam backing provide no relief from a hard concrete slab. Check the adjacent flooring charts for relative characteristics and the ideal combination for your movement activity.

Springstep IV–Is an easy-to-assemble set of panels, that require no tools to assemble. This floating subfloor assembles in 1/3 the time of a standard sprung floor and can be installed in permanent or semi-permanent studio space.

Contact Stagestep™ for All of Your Dance Floor Needs

We want to help all of our customers find the right solution for all of their needs. Whether you have a more general-use space or have specific requirements in mind, Stagestep has a floor that’s certain to suit you. With a variety of options to choose from, you’re in a better place to find just the right thing for your space.