How to Choose Flooring in Your New Home

How to Choose Flooring in Your New Home

December 19, 2019 - By Ryan Smith

Updated on January 13th, 2020

The floor beneath your feet has the potential to shape the feel of your entire home. It’s a high-stakes decision, and it helps to be as knowledgeable as possible before making the final call. Consider: which designs are trending? Which material will last the longest or require the least maintenance? Which flooring is best for which room? The number of potential questions can be dizzying, and an expert’s eye can help lighten the load. That’s why we rounded up flooring professionals from New York to Atlanta to offer their best tips on choosing the flooring for your new home. Read on to see what they had to say!

Lisa Antonio, The Flooring Blog: I feel hardwood flooring offers the most bang for your buck. While hardwood is typically more expensive as an upfront cost, its longevity is incomparable to other floor covering options on the market. We’ve refinished hardwood floors that were over 100 years old. Hardwood does not go out of style. I’ve never heard a client say “wow these hardwood floors are so outdated!” While stain trends come and go, you have the option of sanding and refinishing your hardwood- an option unavailable with other flooring surfaces. Manufacturers have created some beautiful engineered hardwood floors with the same thickness that, often times outperform solid hardwood. This is especially helpful for clients in warmer clients or whose homes are built on slab as they now have an option for hardwood.

Peter Beale, Your Flooring Warehouse: Assuming that the type of flooring (wood, tile, vinyl, etc) has been selected, the first consideration that needs to be made from a design standpoint is what kind of statement you want the floor to make. If you already have bold furnishings or a very busy countertop, then I do not suggest adding another bold element – instead, I would suggest selecting a floor that is more understated with consistent shading. On the other side, if your décor is clean and subtle, then you can choose either a bold statement floor, perhaps with heavy texturing or with a wide color variation -or you can keep it calm and spa-like with a more conservative choice. Above all else, never forget the cardinal rule in design – make sure your selection is complimentary, but contrasting. You want each element of your décor to be able to stand alone as well as complement the décor around it.

Rick’s Carpet and Flooring: Selection of flooring type in specific areas of your home should always include environmental factors. If you are considering hardwood or wood surface flooring keep in mind they perform best and last the longest when acclimated and installed at a relative humidity between 35%-55%. For around $10 at your local hardware store, you can pick up a hygrometer and test it out!

Jason Ramsay, California Flooring Service: When selecting flooring in your home, it’s important to think about the story you want to tell in the home, but more importantly the activity of the home needs to be addressed as well. Do you have kids? Pets? Outdoor pool? How long do we plan to live here? These are just a few of the questions that should be considered when purchasing new flooring.

Brielle Sherlock, Grindkings Flooring: Choose a flooring solution that is not only beautiful but promotes cleaner air throughout your home. Meet polished concrete! Polished concrete is an excellent flooring solution in homes because it is resistant to mold, it does NOT harbor allergens, dust, or dander, it is easy to clean and maintain, and it provides endless decorative options. There’s also no VOCs or carbon footprint left behind.

Lisa Wells, Luxury Vinyl Planking: Luxury Vinyl Planking is resilient and low maintenance.  Laying the same floor throughout your home pulls together spaces visibly and functionally.  All with the natural beauty of hardwood.

Keith Riley, RenovationFind: Are you looking for heated floors? When choosing flooring for your In-floor heating project, consider tile. Most tile will conduct the heat produced by the radiant heating system. Heated tile flooring is a great choice for the bathroom – just imagine stepping out of the shower onto a comfortable, warm floor.

Jenna Tucci, The Calvetta Bros. Floor Show: Updating flooring is always a great choice when owning a home because it updates an entire space instead of furniture, for example, that might update just one room.

Vinyl flooring is the hot trend right now, with good reason. It’s a practical choice because it’s waterproof and scratch-resistant so it’s great for homes with children and/or pets. And it comes in a variety of colors and looks — like hardwood- or tile-look. But the top choice to add value to your home is always going to be hardwood. It’s timeless and classic and frankly, have you ever read a description on a realtor website that said “hardwood floors throughout” and not feel inclined to click on the home?

Hearthwood Floors: When selecting flooring, first evaluate your lifestyle and how you need your floors to perform. If you have an active home with kids and pets, consider a water-resistant engineered hardwood like Hearthwood Floors with WetWorx™ Splatter and Spill Guard – an innovative, new technology that protects all six sides of every Hearthwood plank from everyday messes. And just because you need durable engineered hardwood floors that stand up to life, doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice style. Engineered hardwood is offered in beautiful, on-trend styles.

Quality Flooring 4 Less: Waterproof LVT is hot and trending, but also with advances in technology, wide plank hardwood (7” or greater) is now becoming more affordable and available in many color options/finishes. For tile Calacatta/Carrera is bringing back the timeless look followed by concrete looks with subtle warm tones mixed in. Overall, the hottest trend in flooring is the style/design that fits you and your lifestyle.

The great news is that many hardwood, tile, and vinyl products are electric heat approved so you have options in colder weather.  The new LVT products can tolerate temperatures from 0 degrees to 127 degrees making them perfect for 3 season rooms.

Angela Aull, Aull Real Estate: Look and maintenance are very important aspects of selecting the right flooring. Porcelain tile is a new flooring option that offers the look of hardwood yet is durable, waterproof, and resistant to humidity and temperature changes. With a variety of styles currently available, it could be a choice that not only adds to the comfort of your home, but its value as well.

Sean Busch, Puracy: Choosing a safe floor cleaner is almost as important as the flooring you choose. Select something nontoxic for your children, pets, and of course, floor finish. Puracy’s Natural Surface Cleaner diluted 25-50% with water and a microfiber mop will ensure a clean, residue-free, family-safe surface every time.

Alternative Surfaces: When someone is looking for a certain type of floor, they are not just choosing a floor that is supposed to look amazing and accent their home, but they are choosing a floor that could benefit them financially in the long run. It’s not just a product they are getting, but a process to give them that product, so we give them very detailed information about our work. Our company goes above and beyond for the preparation of concrete to be coated, paying attention to detail, and considering all variables. This gives us the versatility to do any kind of residential installs to large industrial systems.

Mike Galloway, Wizard Flooring: Be careful about which type of hardwood flooring you choose for your home. Bamboo is very popular, even though it is not technically a wood product. It is a plant that is bound together with formaldehyde. More importantly, Chicagoland is not the best climate for it. It is very unstable here, causing it to be very susceptible to expansion (buckling) and contraction (gaps). Homeowners here need to be diligent in keeping the humidity level consistent throughout the year or these problems including buckling and gaps will most likely occur in your floor.

Shans Carpets & Fine Flooring: Good floor is always a value to the home. Especially the waterproof new looks in LVP and tile wood looks are super for a home’s longevity and looks. Additionally, wood floors are warmer than ceramic, tile, and carpet. In warmer climates, marble and tile do well.