Giving your home a makeover can be an exciting prospect, but it can also be quite daunting. There’s so much to consider, from the colour of your walls, a new shower, to the furnishings that will accompany them. With all this going on there is usually a fundamental factor left behind; your floor. While often forgotten, we’re here to stress that your floor should be the first priority when it comes to renovating your home.
The flooring is literally a foundation of not only the building itself, but the decor and any other themes that may run alongside it. This is what makes flooring so important, it helps to set the tone for the rest of your home. Of course it’s not just as simple as ‘choosing’ a floor, there are many different aspects to consider. Let’s take a look at them a little further;
- Budget
Unfortunately we don’t all the freedom to splash our cash willy nilly, in fact a purchase as luxurious needs to be properly thought out and budgeted for accordingly. If you are looking for something a little more up market then why not invest in some solid wood flooring? This type of floor is definitely on the expensive side but it really is an investment for any home. As the name suggests solid wood flooring is made from one piece of solid timber, i.e. real wood. This is what makes it more pricier than the likes of engineered or laminate. Of course you don’t have to go straight in for the most expensive product, there are many alternatives that give the appearance of real wood but at a much lower price!
- Durability
Different types of floors have different wear layers and different capabilities of handling traffic. What you have to determine when choosing a new floor is the type of home you have. If your home is busy with kids and pets running around, then you’re going to need something up to the job. But if you have a quiet home, where perhaps there’s just the two of you, or even you alone, then you could probably look for something less sturdy. For busier rooms like kitchens you should probably consider a harder material, whereas rooms like the bedroom could manage with a softer floor like carpets.
- Cleaning & Maintenance
Okay, cleaning isn’t anyones favourite job but it is something that has to be done. So why make it harder by choosing a floor that’s hard to keep on top of? This is where harder materials have an advantage over the likes of carpets. You will often find that floors like vinyl, laminate and engineered are much simpler to clean as they have an easy to wipe surface, so if anything is spilled there’s no need to worry about it staining and ruining your floor.
So with the different things to consider covered, lets discuss why flooring is so important in relation to your decor.
Well, one of the oldest techniques for deciding on a theme with your decor is by using your floor as the neutral tone. This is because the floor is the one thing that can bring the theme together throughout the whole room, which in the end will result in the space being cohesive and inviting.
When it comes to choosing a colour for your decor there tends to be three primary types; active, passive and neutral. Now, the word neutral often confuses people, contrary to many beliefs it doesn’t have to mean ‘boring’. It actually means that the colour is impartial, or unbiased, and that anything of a neutral tone will pair perfectly with all other colours – that’s what makes them neutral.
Meanwhile, active colours are what we call the more bold colours, when used properly they look great but they can often be overwhelming in a room. It is highly recommended that they are used in small doses and more often than not, used in contrast with neutral backdrops i.e pale wood floors. On the other end of the scale, using a passive colour scheme can often go unnoticed and make the room seem ‘washed out’.
So there you have it, just a few reasons as to why “redecorating your home should start with the floor!”.