When it comes to expressing your style and originality, your house is your canvas, and the flooring you choose serves as the foundation on which your creativity will be on display. A touch of creativity in designing the flooring could add that extra wow factor that you always, wanted not to miss.
There are numerous high-quality options such as carpet, laminate, hardwood, vinyl, and tile flooring, and I am here to inspire you with a variety of unique flooring ideas that will make your home stand out. In this article, I will go through each flooring type that will help you to choose a unique flooring design according to your needs and your home style. So let’s just keep reading.
Unique and Creative Flooring Ideas for Your Home
Here are floor ideas that are not quite common and you might consider giving a shot for your home flooring. While it is important to do something unique in style and design, ensuring an elegant and aesthetic design and look must always remain the prime consideration.
1) Hardwood Flooring
Solid hardwood flooring is composed of boards extracted from a single piece of wood. Solid hardwood floors initially served for structural purposes, running perpendicular to the building’s wooden support beams known as joists or bearers. With the increasing use of concrete as a subfloor in several parts of the world, engineered wood flooring has become more popular. However, solid wood flooring remains everywhere and is attractive.
Solid wood floors, on the other hand, remain common and popular, but more expensive and considered higher-end in the United States. Solid wood floors have a thicker wear surface and can be sanded and finished more frequently than engineered wood floors. It is not rare for homes in New England, Eastern Canada, the United States, and Europe to have their original solid wood floors still in use today.
Choosing solid or engineered wood flooring can help you achieve an expensive and elegant look while also increasing the value of your property.
Solid Hardwood manufacturing
Solid wood flooring is made from a single piece of timber that has been kiln or air-dried prior to sawing. Depending on the intended appearance, the timber can be cut in three ways: flat-sawn, quarter-sawn, or rift-sawn. The lumber is cut to the necessary size and either packed unfinished for on-site installation or finished in the factory. The moisture content at the time of manufacture is carefully managed to prevent the product from bending during transportation and storage.
Hardwood Flooring Installation Tips
Home improvement does not have to be stressful. Indeed, if you plan ahead of time, installing new hardwood floors may be easy. Here are some important tips for installing Baird Brothers hardwood or engineered flooring.
Tools Needed for Wood Flooring Install
- Pneumatic or Manual Flooring Nailer
- Compressor
- Mallet
- Finish Nailer
- Table Saw/Jig Saw
- Tape Measurer
- Chalk Line
- Wood Putty
- Miter Saw
Tips
Do the essential preparation work:
Before having your flooring product delivered, ensure that the internal temperature and humidity levels are appropriate for when the room is occupied. Allow your new flooring to adjust to your surroundings before installing.
Plan your starting point:
The initial boards are the most challenging. Plan your beginning location by considering features such as fireplaces, staircases, and transitions. The starting wall is often the longest uninterrupted wall in space, as it creates a natural flow to the process.
Rack the boards for simple installation:
Racking the boards provides for color and length variations in the flooring. Mix flooring from different packages and lay it out in the order you want the boards fitted, remembering to stagger the end joints.
Face-nail the first several boards into position:
The size of pneumatic and manual flooring nailers makes them difficult to utilize near walls. So, while placing the first row of boards, face-nail them into place. Then countersink the nails, fill the holes with wood putty, and blind nail (nail at a 45-degree angle) through the board’s tongue to the subfloor. Repeat the blind-nailing procedure in each row until a flooring nailer can be used.
Lock the boards in place before nailing through the tongue:
Tap the tongue of each board with a rubber mallet to secure it to the previous rows, keeping the end seam joints staggered across the room. Finally, nail every 6-10 inches, depending on the width of the boards. Pro Tip: To avoid harming the boards while installing them, use a tapping block.
2) Laminate Flooring
Perstorp, a Swedish manufacturer, invented laminate flooring in 1977 and began selling it under the brand name Pergo. They’d been creating floor surfaces since 1923. The firm originally introduced its product to Europe in 1984, and then to the United States in 1994. Perstorp spun off its flooring operations to form Pergo, which is now a subsidiary of Mohawk Industries. Pergo is
the most well-known laminate flooring company, yet the PERGO name does not refer to all laminate floors.
Reference -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminate_flooring
Laminate flooring, sometimes known as floating wood tile in the United States, is a multi-layered synthetic flooring product fused using a lamination process. Laminate flooring is made out of a photographic appliqué layer behind a clear protection layer that looks like wood (or stone). Melamine resin and fiberboard are commonly used materials for the inner core layer.
Laminate Flooring Installation
Before you begin, make sure your subfloor is ready for installation. The base floor should be clean, level, and smooth.
Prepare the Door Jambs:
Cutting trim around entrances is much easier than cutting flooring to match the molding uneven form. Once the door jamb is cut, the flooring will slip under it, giving the room a more finished appearance.If necessary, place a plank of flooring and a part of the laminate completed side down near to the door’s molding. This will show you how high up you should cut the molding.
Plan the first and last rows:
Install flooring parallel to the longest wall or focal point of the room.Measure the width of the room from the longest wall and divide it by the width of the boards. This will inform you how wide the final row of planks should be. Leave a 3/8-inch gap around both walls to allow the flooring to expand. If the last row will be less than 3 1/2 inches wide, consider dividing the width required between the first and last rows.
Cut the First and Last Rows:
If you’re just learning how to cut laminate floors, you won’t need a specific saw. In fact, the boards can be cut with a table saw, miter saw, circular saw, hand saw, or laminate cutter. However, using a diamond blade is recommended because laminate can be difficult to cut through and may harm other types of blades.
Typically, you will cut from the finished side up. Use duct tape to simply identify the board and avoid splintering.
Install the Flooring:
Some laminate planks come with a connected Flooring, so you can skip this step. If your laminate flooring did not come with an attached Flooring, add one to help preserve and insulate the floors, decrease noise, and protect against moisture.
Install the First Row:
The first thing to remember when learning how to lay laminate flooring is that all laminate flooring will expand and contract in response to temperature and humidity changes. To accommodate for this expansion, install 3/8-inch spacers along the wall, leaving a constant spacing around the floor’s margins.
If the room’s door is on one of the shorter walls, begin placing boards on that side of the room. This will give you a clean, uncut edge at the threshold.
Install the First Row:
Start the first row of flooring by arranging the planks with the tongue side toward the wall. Install the second plank next to the first by aligning the tongue with the groove and pressing down to snap it into place.
When you reach the end of the first row, cut the length of the plank required to complete it. When measuring, remember to account for the 3/8-inch gap at either end. Use the remaining laminate flooring planks you cut at the end of row one to begin the following row, as long as they are longer than one foot. If not, begin the row with a wood cut to a length longer than one foot. Lay each row beginning with the remaining pieces from the previous row that are longer than 1-foot until the room is complete.
3) Tile Flooring
Tile flooring is a catch-all word for any durable flooring composed of tiles with grout filling the gaps between them. Ceramic, a clay-based substance, is commonly used for tile floors. These tiles are commonly referred to as porcelain or non-porcelain (sometimes known as “ceramic”) due to compositional variations.
Natural stone tiles are the other well-known type of tile flooring. Porcelain tiles are generally stronger and denser than non-porcelain tiles. Ceramic tiles come in a variety of styles depending on the manufacturing method.
Pros of Tile Flooring:
Long-lasting and durable:
When properly laid, high-quality tiles may give a home a timeless look. With adequate care, tiles are reasonably resistant to permanent damage and can easily last for more than 20 years. A grade system, ranging from Class I to Class V, is utilized to assist you decide which tile is ideal for your property. Class V tile is the most durable, but for a home with ordinary foot traffic, Class III or IV should suffice.
Tile flooring is an excellent choice for bathrooms:
kitchens, and mudrooms since it is water-resistant when properly sealed. Tiles are classified according to how much water they absorb, so seek tiles that are semi-vitreous or vitreous. Keep in mind that tiles and grout aren’t waterproof. To ensure the best water resistance, your tile floor must be maintained.
Convenient replacement:
Tiles allow you to reproduce any type of flooring. Marble is expensive and difficult to install, so you might obtain tiles that look just like marble floors. Tiles with wood, stone, or glass finishes are also available.
Cons of Tile Flooring:
Expensive: Compared to other forms of flooring such as laminate, tile particularly high-quality or real stone tile is more expensive to buy and install.
Grout issues: Grout between tiles must be continuously maintained, particularly in high-traffic areas. Grout is cement-based, thus it is loose and can be penetrated by moisture and material.
Not durable: Unfortunately, this is not a long-lasting flooring solution. If a heavy object falls on a tile floor, it will cause irreparable damage. Families with children who use the house as a playground are more likely to experience breakage. If the thing that falls on the floor isn’t heavy enough, the tile may fracture or chip away instead of breaking.
Not easily changed: Assume one of the tiles in your living room has cracked. To fix it, you would need a similar item. Unless you have some of the identical tiles on hand, it may be difficult to find the exact tile in the market.
Weather effects: Tiles also have a tendency to get warm in the summer and cold in the winter, although this tendency is not as strong as it is with marble and stone flooring.
May feel awkward to walk on: Be ready for some icy feet as the weather turns colder because tile floors are known for cooling down during the winter.
4) Carpet Flooring
For homeowners, carpets are an attractive flooring option. You might use a carpet to improve the decor and revitalize the appearance and feel of your house.
Benefits of carpeting
Economical: Compared to some other flooring options, carpet is typically less expensive and easier to install.
Cozy: Carpets are wonderful to walk on because they absorb sound and feel comfortable underfoot. The amount of sound absorption provided by a carpet increases with thickness. Carpets can lower the noise level in a space; this is particularly advantageous if you live in an apartment or a two-story house.
Excellent for kids and animals: For those who have small children or dogs, carpet is an excellent flooring option. Youngsters are naturally full of energy, but they also have a higher risk of falling. By facilitating a softer landing, your carpeted flooring can shield them in the event of a fall. Pets will feel cozy and at ease, and carpet flooring won’t scratch as easily as vinyl or wood.
Drawbacks of carpeting
Maintenance: For carpets to stay clean, frequent vacuuming is necessary, and stain removal requires occasional professional carpet cleaning. They could require more upkeep than other kinds of flooring.
Allergy and dust mites: If carpets are not kept up on a regular basis, they can become havens for dust mites, allergies, and pests. To keep the carpet neat and clean and to get rid of any bugs, vacuuming should be done on a weekly basis at the very least. Certain carpet designs have the potential to retain allergens and moisture, which can lead to hay fever or allergy episodes.
5) Vinyl Flooring
Because vinyl flooring has so many aesthetic and practical benefits, it is now a common sight in homes and buildings all over the world. Vinyl was initially used in research in the 1930s after being discovered in the 19th century by a French physician.
One kind of multilayered synthetic flooring is vinyl. Vinyl flooring is usually supplied in pieces that can be assembled, such as planks, tiles, or sheets, and is composed of materials like plastic, fiberglass, and PVC. A core layer comprises the majority of the floor, possibly accompanied by an underlay or backing. An image layer that may imitate many other materials, such as wood and ceramic, is placed over this. The changing thickness top wear layer shields the sublayers from damage.
Vinyl Flooring Benefits
Resilient: Vinyl flooring has a reputation for being sturdy. This indicates that most vinyl flooring has long-lasting resilience, is water-resistant, and requires very little upkeep. Vinyl flooring stands up to a lot of wear and tear and typically does not change color if it has a wear layer, making it a suitable choice for any heavily traveled areas.
cozy: Because vinyl is composed of layers, it feels “softer” and more “padded” underfoot than materials like stone or hardwood. In addition to providing insulation, these layers aid in keeping the floor at a constant temperature throughout the year.
Drawbacks of Vinyl Flooring
cannot be resurfaced:
Vinyl flooring cannot be restored since it is made up of a single wear layer over a design layer. When a floor is broken, it has to be completely replaced, either in the
damaged sections or throughout. This is particularly valid for cheap or sheet vinyl.
Does not always add to resale value:
Vinyl floors typically (but not always) have little effect on a home or building’s resale value. Older floors with low-quality vinyl flooring can potentially be detrimental.
Not good for the environment:
Toxic chemicals are used in the manufacturing of vinyl flooring, and vinyl flooring has been reported to release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) after installation. Excessive amounts of off-gassed volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can have
detrimental effects on health, especially in enclosed spaces with no windows or ventilation.
Cost of vinyl flooring
The price of a square foot of vinyl can range from $0.50 for a sheet to $5.00 for luxury planks or tiles. For high-quality vinyl, a rough estimate would be between $2.50 and $5.00. A high-quality, personalized floor will cost extra, as is the case with most flooring kinds.
I hope I have covered some of the unique types of flooring that might interest you. I tried to touch upon those small but critical issues that you often get stuck with to work on your dream floor at your home.
