Choosing flooring for your own house is an exciting experience but also quite complicated, and it needs inevitably the support of specialized experts. They will allow you, not only to identify the flooring, which best fits aesthetically and stylistically with your interior design’s needs, but also to choose the best solution in terms of construction, quality and durability.
In any case, we are glad to offer you our best advice in order to choose better the flooring for your house, whether it is new or to be restructured.
The necessary introduction, to never forget, concerns basically the importance of choosing flooring. This piece of furniture, a functioning element but also of style plays a key role and it is intended to last many years, that’s why it needs to be looked at carefully. It will represent later the base to proceed with the whole furniture of the house.
The first question you should ask yourself, when you choose a floor is: which is my lifestyle? How many people will live in this house? How many children? Will there be pets? These are fundamental information to establish for example the strength that the floor must have in relation to specific stresses. In the same way the closeness of specific external spaces, like for example the garden, will influence your choice that will consider necessarily anti scratch wood flooring and products with materials much stronger to any type of aggression.
The same kind of approach on the other hand should be intended for other particular rooms of the house, like for example the kitchen or the bathroom, of necessity, subjected to humidity and destined to necessary and frequent cleaning-up operations. Therefore it is better to put aside particularly delicate solutions like wood flooring and avoid at all any non waterproof flooring. On the contrary, in more intimate and calmer environments – like the bedrooms or the living room – you could leave more space to your creativity and be less influenced from obvious functioning necessities.
Our second piece of advice goes somehow hand in hand with the first and concerns the budget. Do not stretch out and avoid, if possible, to choose floors too cheap: more often than not the price performance leaves much to be desired and it will just need a short time to realize the obvious lacks of this kind of products. They will be stained immediately, they will be ruined easily and they will reveal porous and unable to oppose humidity and grease, they will present stained rings after washing.
In fact to a low price does not necessarily corresponds a bargain, on the contrary! When it comes to flooring and covering, an apparently very beneficial price can instead go hand in hand with a collection of unappreciated floors, or stocked for a long time because unsold or even obsolete and low-performing. Think about how also the best furnished apartment could become poor at the sight with a low quality floor! There is nothing worse than entering a well-maintained house with a shabby floor.
Therefore you should guide yourself towards products which can really guarantee an excellent price performance and for several, and several years you won’t have to worry about your flooring anymore.
Regarding the criteria of choosing a floor for the house, the technical one should be valued even before the aesthetical one.
Once defined the brand or the line which best fit to you in term of functionality and quality, you could dedicate yourself to the choice of color, material and finishing.
How to choose the floors for your house: the material
During the choice of the floors for the house, the ceramic is still the most used material – both for its solidity and for its versatility. Impact-resistant, realized in unlimited shapes, colors and finishing, hygienical, waterproof and easy to clean, a ceramic floor is for sure the excellent solution for hygienically safe environments where for example inhabit also children and pets. Not only: the ceramic guarantee a remarkable strength to external agents, too thanks to its particular manufacturing. Finally, the productive level of ceramic floors has reached today such an excellence to offer a nearly unlimited proposal in term of style, refinement and elegance.
In the same way, among the preferred flooring in terms of materials appear also the one in stoneware, because resistant and long-lasting and capable of “reproduce” perfectly other materials, too like the stone or the wood. The stoneware is proposed in red version or porcelain and, in both cases, it is available with glazed, not glazed or polished. The glazed porcelain is completely waterproof and so it is really easy in terms of maintenance. But its advantages don’t stop here: its main quality is actually the one of guarantee an excellent performance mostly with the under-floor heating.
The wood floor is another appreciated solution for the house flooring. Its main feature is, of course, its texture, capable of infusing a high degree of comfort. This type of material is also characterized from an excellent thermal and acoustic insulation. Both in the version entirely in solid wood and in the one prefinished and pre-treated, the wood floor is proposed in several essences which are different from one another for color, finishing and durability.
And regarding the natural stones? This type of internal flooring is growing constantly thanks to the users’ appreciation mostly because of the incredible sensation of naturalness and texture which is able to transmit, visually but also tactically. Returned to a fashion after a period of partial oblivion, the floors in natural stone seem to confirm the need of the human being to re-connect with the nature and somehow to take it back: the recall to not only natural elements, but even primordial, is really strong and the stone can communicate it best. Its innate ability of conferring a particular touch to every environment, thanks to its technical and aesthetical characteristics, situates it without doubts within the best loved materials of the last years.
One last type of internal flooring which is worth mentioning is finally quarry, a mixture of clay kneaded with water and proposed in two kinds: antique quarry and glazed quarry. The first is characterized by various irregularities, as consequence of an artisanal production which naturally gives it a particular added value. The second one instead presents usually an irregular surface caused from a different absorption of the glaze. In general, this material can represent an excellent choice for house with a rustic character, shabby chic or even for external.
Size matters: big or small tiles?
During the choice of the floor for the house, you should consider the size of the tiles, too, because this can also be a good ally in order to transmit to the environment specific suggestions of style and space.
The tiles, as already mentioned, are available in different sizes, from the classical square 20x20 or 30x30 centimeters up to 80x80 and beyond. Even in this case, the choice is delicate and it should happen in a way that balances at best functionality and beauty of the products.
For what concerns the tiles in big size, that is from the dimension of 60x60 centimeters, they are particularly appreciated for their ability of transmitting lightness to the environments and for their modern and contemporary style. Characterized by a marked minimalism and design, they offer sparser joints in comparison to their homologous of smaller size and they enlarge the spaces, giving the further impression of a greater width of volumes – increased by the reduced joints to a thickness of only 2 or 3 millimeters.
Generally chosen in sober and neutral colors, like gray, beige and charcoal, but also black, these tiles offer remarkable material effects especially when they are placed in a wide environment which let the patterns unfold to the best. You could, in this sense, opt for even wood or stone effects, nice and elegant and capable of adapting better to nearly any housing style.
And if the tiles of classical sizes 20x20 or 30x30 still represent one of the favorite choices for lot of final users, mostly for environments characterized by a classical and timeless style, it is worth without doubts saying a word for the one of smaller size.
The small size tiles can guarantee an excellent mosaic effect, while adapting at the same time to rooms of any dimension. Choosing the tiles’ size, definitively, is related essentially to the taste and the stylistic suggestion you want to give to your house’s rooms. The same parameter should be respected in choosing the tiling, which can be oblique or parallel to the walls.
Our final advice is not to limit your imagination and to consider also the possibility of mixing different tiles’ sizes. Try to imagine a modular tiling: if well-executed, this solution will make your environment unique and modern, really beautiful. You will have at disposal an aesthetical unprecedented continuity, even among flooring and covering, and the ability of harmonizing different styles and suggestions, creating a house with an inimitable aesthetic.
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