The floor is the foundation for any room scheme and
has a profound effect on its atmosphere, as well as appearance. The
floor is also the most used and abused surface in any house; battered by
feet, scraped by furniture, and requiring regular vacuuming, brushing,
mopping, or sweeping.
When deciding what to do with floor, consider two
issues: the floor itself and the carpeting or rug that covers it.
Budget, the look, and how you plan to use the space will help you decide
what to do.
Different parts of the house make different demands
on their respective floor coverings. Some like halls, stairs corridors,
and routes between well-used areas, require a floor that is particularly
hard-wearing. Bathrooms, especially those with showers, work better if
the flooring is waterproof. Kitchens work better if the flooring is
stain-resistant. Bedrooms feel more comfortable if at least some of the
floor is soft and warm to the touch of a bare foot.
A solid wood floor is timeless and beautiful, but if
it's in bad condition, it should be refinished or covered with
wall-to-wall carpeting. Floors such as concrete, stone, and ceramic tile
are durable but hard on the feet in spaces where people stand a lot.
Resilient floors such as vinyl, linoleum, cork, or rubber have some give
and so are easier on the feet. Wall-to-wall carpeting is softer on the
feet and can make a room look larger. It also absorbs sound. Area rugs
are an investment that can easily be brought to your next house.
As no single material can comply perfectly with all
these domestic demands, the tendency is to choose room-specific
flooring. This is all very sensible, but can result in an interior that
feels fragmented and jumpy as you step from quarry tiles in the hall to
stripped floorboards in the living room to linoleum in the kitchen to
carpet on the stairs, and so on.
Using a single type of flooring that flows from room
to room is one of the tricks designers use to make a space appear
larger; walls seem to "float" as if the the floor slipped beneath them,
and the eye follows the floor through doorways, along corridors, and
across landings in seamless vistas. Probably the most practical choices
of single flooring are some kind of stone tile or wood. Both wood and
stone can be softened with addition of rugs, to mark out seating areas
in livings room, or create islands of warmth in bedrooms. For bathrooms
and kitchens, both wood and stone can be sealed to be stain-and water
resistant. Wall-to-wall carpet may be appropriate for upstairs bedrooms,
where it muffles sound and makes rooms feel luxuriously cozy.
Tips
- Spend as much as you can afford. Flooring is
disruptive and expensive to change. A floor that looks and feels
beautiful, and sounds solid underfoot, is an excellent interior
investment.
- Acoustics have a subtle but pervasive influence
over the atmosphere of any indoor space. Large areas of unrelieved hard
flooring, such as stone or tiles, make for harsh acoustics unless
dampened by soft furnishings. Wood is more gentle, although wooden
stairs and sprung wooden floors tend to clatter and reverberate
underfoot. Again, runners and rugs will mute the effect.
- Consider
color. Pale flooring reflects more light into a dark room. A dark
floor, on the other hand, can "ground" a room that is light enough
already. A very shiny dark floor acts like a mirror and increases the
impression of height in a room.
- Natural flooring, whether
wood, stone, or vegetable matting, are more likely to wear and weather
gracefully than synthetics. Their gentle, earthy colors seem appropriate
underfoot, just as the pale blues, grays, and off-whites of the sky
seem right for ceilings.
- A square or rectangle of carpet or matting, bound at the edges, can unify a room with odd corners and angles.
- Plain mats can also be used in larger spaces to divide the room in "zones", whether for dining or relaxing in a sociable group.
