How to choose the flooring for your home?

There are two ways in which a floor is chosen when it comes to the perfect looking room. You can have a centre piece of attention in the room around which you customize the flooring or if you are starting up a new home, you can have the flooring to be the central theme of the rooms and build around it. The second option is the more common case. So how do you go about choosing the right floor for you?


1) The Budget - Get a fix on how much you are willing to spend. Once you start exploring the flooring options available in the Indian market today, you are likely to be swept off your feet. Do not forget that a quality finish when it comes to laying the floor right is an expensive job as well. Factor that into your costs. Fix a budget and go shopping and do not budge beyond the amount you have set aside for the floors. Keep a little cushion on that figure as well.

2) Usage - The key factor to choosing the right floor of a room is to know what it will be used for. Rooms with heavy usage, kids and pets need to have a floor which is durable and easy to clean. If there are only two adults living, you can go for a flooring that is lower on maintenance. A crafts/ hobby room needs a specialized (like cork or laminated) flooring so that needles, beads and other objects can be detected and picked up easily. Bathrooms should have a floor system which is non- skid, water and mold resistant, while being extremely easy to clean (know how the gaps in the tiles go dark and ugly after a while?).

3) Light - In rooms which have less light, use a light coloured floor. It will make the room feel bigger and more spacious. Light coloured floors also look more contemporary and will go well with that new age sofa set you just saw at the home store. Lighter coloured wooden floors also tend to hide wear and tear better than darker coloured wooden floors. So if you have heavy traffic in a room, go for a light coloured wooden floor system. Dark floors absorb more light and give the room a dramatic, traditional feel. This look is enhanced with little and light furniture.

4) Choose with time on your mind - Remember to choose a floor with which you can live for a while. Brochures and magazine pictures can make your imagination run wild but with the Indian craftsmanship quality in general,  be warned that the final result may be a far cry from that brochure image you saw while choosing the floor system. Unless you have crazy amounts of money to experiment with your flooring system often, choose wisely. If possible, ask your supplier to show you some real installations of the system you have chosen. It might make you change your mind or help you make it up finally. :)

These little considerations should get your home looking just the way you want it to. Let the kids spill some water colours, let the dog play fetch and you can make love on that light coloured oak for a change! Get your friends over and see them get floored. Cheers to that.