Your living room is a place to relax and unwind after a hard day’s work. For those with young children, it is also a place of play and in turn happiness. In order for your living room to be as comfortable as possible for both you, your family and guests, there are a number of things that can be done. Large, comfortable sofas are great for seating and chunky, warm rugs are fantastic for the winter months when that extra bit of warmth is needed. For decoration, feature walls are a fantastic way to break up a room, and lighting is also a key part to creating the perfect living room ambiance.
One area of a living room which is often overlooked though is flooring, which is strange given that we have to walk on it to get anywhere within our home. Your living room floor is also the largest surface area of the room which is decorated with a fitting. It makes sense then to take your living room flooring seriously and choose the right flooring first time.
Here are some tips on choosing the perfect flooring for your living room.
1. Carpet or wood?
This is the biggest decision you are going to have to make when choosing which flooring to have in your living room. There are, of course, advantages to both. Wooden flooring is more aesthetically pleasing than carpet, and it is also much easier to clean and spill proof, depending on the quality to which it is laid. Carpet is warmer and also safer for young children as a fall on the carpet is less likely to result in serious injury versus a hardwood floor. Generally, though, real wood flooring is the best flooring to have within a living room as it is stylish, durable and will outlive a carpet by years.
2. Consider the rest of your home’s decor
A consistent home is a happy home, that’s what an interior designer once said to me. If your home makes use of neutral colors and modern fittings, a light wood flooring would look incredible in a living room, as would a light carpet. Wood is more versatile in its design than carpet, though, and a dark wood floor would look fantastic within a period property. Whatever your home’s decor, there will be the perfect flooring out there for your living room. If you have decided on a material as mentioned in point 1 above, this is the next step to choosing a perfect living room flooring.
3. Budgeting
You should always make a budget when shopping for your home and that especially rings true for flooring, which can be very expensive depending on what you are after. Real Oak Floors have a great range of engineered and real wood flooring which is made to a high quality with good pricing, whilst for carpet, there are a number of great stores online. For the best fitting, though, buying carpet should ideally be done in person at a store. Wood flooring is easier to buy online as naturally lit photographs of it are the same as seeing it in real life.