When faced with how to select flooring for each room of your house, you may be surprised to discover the number of options available.
Thankfully, it’s possible to quickly narrow down your choices by looking at flooring to suit your specific needs and the conditions of that particular room.
Here’s what we covered in this article:
- Maintenance
- Budget
- Overall Look and Texture
- Location and Environment
- Bedrooms
- Living Areas
- Mudrooms and High Traffic Areas
- Bathrooms and Laundry Rooms
- Playrooms
- Kitchens
- Dining Rooms
The Best Flooring Meets Your Specific Needs
As you look for flooring to suit every room in your house, consider your household’s needs and how each flooring type provides much-needed benefits.
Maintenance
Some flooring requires only mopping or sweeping on occasion, while other types require much more attention to prevent damage.
Hardwood floors are an excellent example of a beautiful flooring option with slightly higher maintenance requirements, but it’s easy to clean and relatively durable, making it a popular choice throughout the home.
Harder and less porous options like ceramic tile, vinyl, or stone are excellent for areas where moisture or humidity is common.
There are also eco-friendly options like bamboo and cork with comparable maintenance requirements to wood options.
Budget
Flooring prices vary based on your location and the material used, so it’s a good idea to budget in advance as this will help you figure out selecting flooring throughout your house.
Tile is an excellent example of where a single flooring type can have a widely variable square foot cost, with prices starting as low as 69 cents and easily going over $20 per square foot for luxury options.
Other flooring types will have similar ranges, so decide in advance what your budget is and explore the options that fall within that range.
For example, porcelain and ceramic tiles are affordable hard-wearing options, and carpet squares are often less costly than full carpet sheets. Vinyl, laminate, and engineered wood are also worth exploring if you don’t want to pay for traditional hardwood floors.
Overall Look and Texture
When it comes to an overall aesthetic in the home, many homeowners want to know:
- Should flooring be the same throughout the house?
- Do wood floors have to match room to room?
- How many types of flooring in a house is too much?
- Should carpet match throughout the house?
The answer to these questions is that it depends on the overall look you’re going for, and flooring is easily mixed or coordinated to match a color scheme of your choice.
It’s OK to have similar materials meet where rooms join together, such as two different wood floors side by side. It’s also OK to have different hardwood floors or multiple flooring materials in connecting rooms.
This design choice might seem strange, but mixing up the flooring in your home can give larger areas a more divided feel that is cozy, and it allows you to layer texture into the room.
There’s no set rule on how many different flooring types you should have, and carpets do not need to match throughout your home. Bedrooms are also an excellent place to add a carpet in colors or patterns you wouldn’t want in other parts of the house.
Location and Environment
Some individuals prefer whole house flooring ideas where they use one material throughout their entire home. While this might sound easy, having one flooring in the whole house will most likely not work for many families for various reasons.
Each room in your home is a different environment that will provide multiple challenges for any flooring you choose.
For example, traditional hardwood in a bathroom could prove disastrous as the constant water exposure will cause the floor to warp. Similarly, a porous or unsealed cork floor in a kitchen will quickly collect stains you can’t easily remove and look unsightly long before it wears out.
Best Flooring Options for Every Room
Now that we’ve discussed some of the characteristics to help you figure out how to select flooring throughout your house let’s go room-by-room to see how mixing flooring types in-home is a realistic option.
Best Flooring Options for Bedrooms
Bedrooms tend to see moderate traffic, and in children’s rooms, hardwood flooring or laminate flooring is ideal flooring material as it’s easy to clean.
Hardwood is a stylish option for sure, and it can last decades with proper care, but carpet is a more plush and comfortable option that provides welcome warmth.
If you already have hardwood in your bedroom or are desperate to have it, you can always add a cozy area rug on top for a luxurious vibe.
Best Living Room Flooring Options
When it comes to your living room, there is a lot of variability in foot traffic, the potential for mess, and what those areas get used for with their proximity to other rooms in the house.
These areas often get covered in carpet because it’s easy and affordable as a flooring option, but there are a wide variety of materials that might serve you better.
Hardwood provides a stylish appearance, and it’s easy to maintain and keep clean, but you can also get cork, laminate, engineered wood, or tile.
If you have children, a stain-resistant flooring option is ideal, and you can layer carpets, cork tiles, or other materials over the top as needed.
Bamboo is an eco-friendly option that comes in various finishes, and it’s comparable to hardwood in many ways. Natural stone is also a viable option as long as it’s not near the kitchen or other areas prone to spills that can stain the surface.
If the living room in your home are high traffic, consider a hard flooring like stone, tile, or wood but avoid putting wood or laminate in living areas where the floor might get exposed to water as this can cause warping and other damage.
Best Flooring Options for Mudrooms and High Traffic Areas
Mudrooms are usually separate from laundry rooms, and if this is the case in your home, you’ll want to pick a flooring option that can stand up to the wear and tear with minimal maintenance.
Dirt and debris get tracked into mudrooms on the bottom of shoes, and this room is no stranger to water and high foot traffic. Kids drag in toys and other objects from the yard or garage into this room, and pets often spend time in this part of the house as well.
You’ll want to pick a stain-resistant, wear-resistant flooring like tile, which is affordable and comes in a wide range of finishes to match any decor.
This flooring type can stand up well to claws from excited pets, resist dents from dropped items, and remain unfazed by gritty shoes grinding debris onto the surface repeatedly.
Other high traffic areas also benefit from tile, and you can find modern tiles that convincingly mimic wood flooring. This type of material only needs an occasional mopping or vacuuming, but you can consider vinyl if you want a comparable option with a warmer feel.
Vinyl comes in planks or tiles, it’s slightly less expensive than porcelain tile, and it’s easy for homeowners to install themselves. Vinyl planks can also mimic wood convincingly, but some types are not as scratch resistant as tile, so you’ll still need to put bumpers on the bottoms of chairs or stools that get moved around.
Best Flooring Options for Bathrooms and Laundry Room
Bathroom and Laundry room floors need to be resistant to water, easy to clean, and not negatively impacted by humidity, cleaning products, and spilled toiletries, cosmetics, or detergent.
Porcelain tile has several characteristics that make it excellent for these rooms:
- It’s resistant to damage from chemicals and ingredients commonly found in toiletries, cosmetics, and cleaning products.
- It’s straightforward to clean and requires very little maintenance
- Modern tile options include “no-slip” coatings to keep wet floors from getting too slick
If you don’t like the idea of a cold floor beneath your feet, then vinyl flooring is a similarly well-suited material that has a warmer touch. Alternatively, you could install heated tile flooring, which adds a bit of work to the installation process but results in a slightly warm floor under your feet.
Best Flooring Options for Playrooms
Kids are not known for being gentle on the floors where they play, and you’ll want a type of flooring that is comfortable for them to sit or lounge. A low pile carpet is an excellent option as it’s easy to vacuum and clean but still provides a soft feel.
Carpet tiles are a popular option here as they often feature materials like nylon or polypropylene that are easy to clean and extremely durable. Carpet tiles are also easy to replace if one gets stained or damaged, and they come in a wide variety of patterns and sizes.
If wall-to-wall carpet or carpet tiles aren’t appealing, consider area rugs, or foam tiles in fun colors that you can arrange to fit your space.
Best Flooring Options for Kitchen
Wood is another popular choice in kitchens, but there are other materials to consider. Porcelain tile holds up to the high levels of foot traffic expected with kitchens, and it’s very resistant to spills and stains caused by all kinds of food items.
Vinyl is another excellent option in this room as it comes in many finishes and is easy to clean.
Both materials hold up well to kids and pets, and you can opt for a more traditional look or select a modern or unique design. Both vinyl and tile require little maintenance, with only occasional mopping or vacuuming required.
You can use kitchen area rugs to put less stress on your feet and your laminate/wood floor.
Best Dining Room Flooring Options
Dining rooms are an excellent place for hardwood flooring or engineered hardwood flooring if you prefer. This room doesn’t get a ton of foot traffic, but hardwood floors make it easy to clean up after meals and don’t require much mopping.
Wood will wear over time and is prone to scratching if you have pets, but the maintenance otherwise is low and only requires sweeping or vacuuming.
