Should My Home’s Floors Match?
We get this question all the time. Should your home have the same flooring throughout? What if you want different flooring in your kitchen, but you have an open floorplan? If you have beautiful hardwoods in one part of your home and are now doing the rest of the rooms, should you try to coordinate? Is it even possible? Today, we will look at all of the questions surrounding coordinating your home’s flooring.
How you decorate your home is a matter of personal style and taste. There is no right or wrong about it. There are some ways to make your home more aesthetically pleasing, however.
To Match Your Floor or Not to Match Your Flooring—That is the Question
Your first decision will be whether you want to match all your floors. If you do this, it is a good idea to do it all at once so that your flooring and finish match exactly. Even small variations in the boards’ size or the shade of the finish will be apparent to the human eye. If you want matching floors but would like to have the project completed in stages, plan this out with your installer in advance.
A Picture is NOT Worth a Thousand Words
Depending on the lighting, the angle of the shot, and even the camera, photographs show color differently than it appears. You are better off comparing a piece of your existing flooring to a sample of the flooring you are considering. A reputable installer will be able to assist you in choosing the right flooring for your home.
Some Floors will Never Match
Many kinds of wood change color over time. One example, the Brazilian cherry, becomes a deeper red with each passing year. So, trying to match it with another Brazilian cherry several years later will never work. We see a similar effect in birch flooring birch, which takes on a gray color.
Other things that are hard to match years later are the height and width of the floorboards.
Coordinating Floors Rather Than Matching Floors
It is common for people to prefer carpeting in their bedrooms and linoleum or tiling in their kitchens. The good news is that both types of floors look beautiful next to hardwood floors. Consider where the natural boundaries of the rooms are and how to make a natural division between them. Doorways, of course, are the perfect place to transition from hardwood floors in the hallway to carpeted floors in the bedrooms.
Consider How to Blend and Contrast rather than Crash and Clash.
Like merging lanes of traffic, you want the colors and styles to transition smoothly from one room to the next. You wouldn’t want to have a sleek, ultra-modern dining room next to a baroque living room.
Likewise, you want to minimize the number of different floors you can see from any one vantage point. Three is okay, two is best, and never, ever, have more than two types of floors meeting in one room. For example, don’t have your carpeted living room meet a kitchen with linoleum in an open floor plan and then have a hardwood hallway floor leading off the same living room. It is overwhelming to the senses.
Where is the Best Place to Start?
Call a flooring expert. The installers at Dave’s Floor Sanding and Installation have been helping homeowners beautify their homes for years. Contact us today for a free in-home consultation.