How to Choose the Right Flooring for Your Space

We have renovated several houses over the years and, by far, one of the best projects to completely transform them has been switching out the flooring.

Nothing dates a home like old, damaged carpets or linoleum.

Aside from paint, I would say that flooring is the very best place to invest your money when you are renovating and updating.

But there are several key factors to consider when you are choosing the type of flooring that best suits your newly updated space; whether it be hardwood or laminate, tile or resilient flooring, or an area rug accent.

Hardwood:

Hardwood is a favourite choice for many due to it’s classic design, clean feel, and the charm and warmth it adds to a space. It is my personal absolute favourite flooring type! It’s also available in so many colours and styles that you can find one to suit every design style and everyone’s taste. We inherited simple, classic oak flooring in our current home. I just love the way it makes our home feel airy and bright because of it’s light reflective qualities.

Over the past several years, engineered hardwood has become increasingly popular due to it’s more budget-friendly price tag. Some people have questioned the durability of engineered hardwood, but with the new Epic+ by Shaw Flooring, you no longer have to worry about that factor. It has a special UV-cured polyurethane finish, called ScufResist Platinum. With aluminum oxide that resists scuffs up to 6X better than the competition, It’s the most durable, impact-resistant hardwood on the market.

In our first investment property renovation we found beautiful old Fir floors below the old carpets, and restored them. It’s incredible the difference that adding hardwood (and fresh paint) can make to a space!

Laminate:

If hardwood seems a little high for the budget, or pets are a consideration, you may want to consider laminate flooring. Laminate has many benefits aside from it’s more budget-conscious price tag. And laminate has come a long way! It really does look incredibly like real hardwood flooring. Available in just as many colours and styles as real hardwood, laminate is really durable. That’s we chose it for our our second rental house. It it gave use the look of hardwood without the price tag.

Carpet:

Carpet is a great choice for spaces where you want a little bit of extra comfort and softness. People often prefer carpet in the bedrooms, and it is a popular choice on stairs and in family rooms as well. We have carpet going down our stairs as well as in our basement family room and bedrooms. We love the extra comfort and warmth it provides down there during the winter months.

Sometimes people are hesitant to put select a light coloured carpet for busy family spaces, but I love my light carpeting! A good quality carpet, like Shaw’s R2X, provides such excellent stain protection that you won’t need to worry. Plus you can rest even easier with LifeGuard – a new Shaw innovation that makes your carpet waterproof!

Tile: 

We have a ton of tile in our home! Now, we didn’t put it in ourselves. It was here when we bought the house. But it was certainly a bonus to inherit our lovely tile! Being super hard-wearing and waterproof, tile is the perfect choice for many spaces. Foyers, kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, and even busy hallways are great spaces to consider tile. Some people complain that tile can be too hard or too cold, but it is easy to warm it up with a beautiful area rug.

As far as price points, tile is generally fairly reasonably priced per square foot, but can be considerably more expensive to install. So unless you are planning to DIY it, you may want to consider other waterproof options, such as:

Resilient Flooring -Vinyl

Vinyl has come a long way, baby. It’s no longer your Grandma’s linoleum. We went with a resilient flooring in our second rental property kitchen and couldn’t be happier with it. The comfort in knowing that it is completely waterproof and virtually indestructible is enough.

Along with some fresh paint, resilient flooring can also completely transform and update your space, often at a much lower cost then real tile or hardwood.

Shaw offers a new innovation called Floorte which is a resilient luxury vinyl floor that offers a wide variety of highly authentic wood, stone, and tile looks. Not only is it easy to install, but it’s flexible enough to conceal an imperfect subfloor and is waterproof even at the seams.

Area Rugs:

If you have selected a hard flooring choice over wall to wall carpeting, you may find yourself in want of a little more warmth. Area rugs are the perfect way to add warmth, and finding one that suits the size and shape of your room is critical.

After struggling with rectangular rugs that weren’t quite sized correctly for the shape of our living room, I finally went round. Our new round area rug is much better for creating the cozy and intimate seating area I was after. Shaw’s Cut-A-Rug program is perfect if your space doesn’t fit well with standard area rug sizes, or if you want more flexibility in your design choices. It’s pretty awesome to be able to choose the style, the color, the border, the shape, and the size with Cut-A-Rug.

Still not sure what choice to make? Head over to Shaw for some more inspiration , current trends , and tips for choosing the right floor for you. Because new flooring really can be the best way to transform your home!

 

           

 

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Shaw Floors. The opinions and text are all mine.