At Ottawa’s Rideau Centre, many customers are showing concern about the shopping center’s newly-renovated flooring made of white quartz, believing it’s slippery and will cause them to fall.However, according to the Ottawa Sun, the new floors are only slightly more slippery than the other three flooring surfaces throughout the shopping center that are waiting to be renovated — terrazzo floors, floors stripped of terrazzo that will soon be renovated and rough-textured tile

“Slippery is a perception,” Cindy VanBuskirk, general manager of the Rideau Centre, told the Sun. “Change is sometimes uncomfortable. Transitioning from one surface to another definitely makes the quartz tile feel slippery in comparison.”

“Regarding whether quartz floors are more slippery than terrazzo, it is important to look at the source of the product,” says Michael Mallory, VP of Sales at Trend. “Poured in terrazzo from the USA requires a high level of maintenance and constant polishing. This is typically why an alternative like quartz or other engineered stones may be used.”

Currently, the flooring renovations are halfway completed at the Rideau Centre, the Sun reports — and of the 400,000 who walk the new quartz floors each week, only a handful of complaints have been filed, VanBuskirk said.The renovation work has a total price tag of about $360 million in Canadian dollars, the Sun reports.