Floors are one of the first things people notice when walking into your house. Think about it, it's literally the only piece of your home they are in direct contact with at all times. Your guests don't even give you that much attention! We've got four tips to get your floors to make the right first impression.
Why You Need to Choose Wisely
Flooring is one of the most expensive pieces of the interior of your home, so make it count. I’m going to make a bold statement and say that most homes today have too many flooring types. Between the foyer, kitchen, living and dining room most houses have enough flooring options to compete with The Home Depot.
How Flooring Can Make Your Home Feel Bigger
Sometimes knocking down walls might not be the best option for your home, and that's alright. You can still achieve a more open floor plan using other tactics. First, you could reconfigure how you use the existing space you have right now. By reconfiguring the kitchen, living and dining areas to make it feel like one big space you will create the effect of having an open floor plan. The most important trick to unifying these spaces? The floors of course. And paint. And a few other things, but hey, we'll just stick to the floors today.
And The Forecast Today Is...
Trends are showing that people are going back to hard surface flooring in almost all rooms. And I love it. Why? Because carpet holds stains, smells and shows walking aisles that wood, stone and other hard surfaces don’t. They also make it very easy to clean. More importantly, it boosts the resale value of your home.
K.I.S.S. Those Floors
If you’re on board to add hard surface flooring in the public areas of your home, here's another tip. Remember in 6th grade math class when your math teacher gave you an acronym to remember when doing algebra? K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple, Stupid. That's the approach to take with your flooring. Keep it simple, and what I mean by that is to choose one flooring option, two max, and install it throughout all the public areas of your home. By public areas I'm talking about the kitchen, living room, dining room, foyer, etc. It unifies the main floor by creating a more seamless transition between the rooms. Also, it actually makes the house feel bigger. No joke.
When your guests can follow the same flooring pattern throughout the entire main floor of your home, it feels as if they keep moving throughout the same room. The flooring you choose for the public areas also subconsciously denotes a feeling of permission like, “Hey, I can walk here.” Or, “Hey, I can go in this room”.
Go Neutral Or Go Home
Choose a flooring material that is relatively neutral and timeless, isn’t uber contemporary and can match multiple looks. Chances are that you’ll repaint, change out furniture and wall art every 5-10 years. The floors though, because they are such a costly expense, will likely stay throughout these ‘light’ remodels. If you like color and pizzazz, use the wall paint and furniture to fuel your creative desires. Make the right choice with flooring the first time, and you’ll save yourself big money when it comes time to update.
Step Up Your Game
We want you to have a house that you love and which takes your hosting to the next level. In fact, we want you to be kicking people out long after the party’s over because there's just something awesome about your house that makes them not want to leave. Maybe it's the free food, maybe it’s your awesome dad jokes, but we’d like to think it's the environment you created within the walls of your home. Unified flooring is sure to make one of your greatest assets even greater.
Be sure to check out our INSIGHTS page to find past articles we’ve written that might be helpful too. Click here to go to INSIGHTS now.