8 Tips for Choosing New Flooring

Choosing new flooring for your home can be exciting — it can change the entire look, feel, and ambiance of a room — but we understand that it can also feel overwhelming trying to choose from the seemingly endless options available.

Whether you are updating a current room or choosing flooring for your new home, we’ve compiled our top 8 tips for choosing the right flooring for your home.

1. Measure Your Space

One of the first steps to determining the right flooring for your home is measuring your space. Knowing the approximate square metres of your home will help you determine how much product you will need and roughly how much it will cost.

2. Check Out the Trends

While real timber will always be a classic flooring choice that will never go out of style, it is important to be aware of the many updates in the flooring industry in recent years.

Through advancements in technology, an exciting array of flooring alternatives have become available.

From engineered timber flooring — an option that looks exactly like real timber without the cost and maintenance — to hybrid flooring that is 100% waterproof, durable, rigid, and aesthetically pleasing, these new options might be the perfect match for your home.

3. Consider Your Lifestyle

When choosing flooring, it is important to consider which options will suit your lifestyle.

Ask yourself questions such as:

• Will this flooring be installed in a home with pets or children?
• Will the flooring be in a room with high moisture levels (i.e. bathrooms or laundries)
• Will there be heavy foot traffic?

If you have pets or children, it is safe to assume that you want a hardwearing floor that is scratch and stain-resistant. The best flooring options for homes with kids or pets include durable options such as vinyl, laminate, engineered timber, and carpet.

If you have pets, this can impact the type of flooring we recommend.

While traditional carpet is susceptible to stains and may not be your first answer when you ask yourself “which flooring is best for kids?”, carpet tiles offer an excellent option.

Carpet tiles allow a greater degree of versatility since they are individual tiles rather than large rolls. This means that a single stained tile can be removed if needed as opposed to replacing the entire carpet in a room.

Heavy traffic areas may want to consider resilient options such as our revolutionary Aquaplank laminate, hybrid flooring, vinyl, or engineered timber.

4. Know Who Will Install the Flooring

Laying the flooring yourself is a sure way to cut costs. However, laying solid timber, carpet, or tiles can be tricky to install correctly for DIY-ers. The potential result? Damaged flooring, wasted time, and wasted money.

We are committed to helping our customers avoid these costly, frustrating DIY mistakes. Although we do carry some excellent DIY-friendly flooring options, we almost always recommend hiring a professional tradesman.

We strive to empower our customers with the knowledge they need for choosing the appropriate route of installation. We would be happy to help you decide if the flooring you are interested in would be well-suited for DIY installation or not. If we recommend a professional layer, we can easily connect you with over 200 professional layers Australian-wide.

5. Ask For a Sample

The last thing you want to do is purchase your new flooring, get it installed, and find out that it does not look how you had hoped.

At The Online Flooring Store, we offer samples on many of our products or you can visit our retail showroom in Tweed Heads South (on the border of Queensland and New South Wales) to see flooring examples in person.

6. Pay Attention to Location

The room your flooring will be installed in will have a big impact on which type you choose.

For instance, an entry room or foyer needs a certain “wow” factor while also possessing the ability to stand up to the elements. Since sand, rain, or mud easily gets dragged into entryways, we suggest a durable, waterproof flooring such as Aquaplank laminate or vinyl planks for these areas. To help minimise the amount of debris that gets dragged in, we recommend placing entry mats in front of any doors that lead inside your home.

To avoid warping, flooring in utility, bathrooms, and laundries needs to be able to withstand spills and humidity. For these areas, it is hard to beat vinyl plank flooring, although a range of other excellent options also exists.

Waterproof vinyl or hybrid planks are popular in bathrooms.

7. Consider Your Interior Design Theme

Flooring has a direct impact on the atmosphere of your home and can be the final piece of the puzzle when it comes to pulling off the interior design theme you are going for.

For example, solid timber would be a lovely match for contemporary and rustic styles, which place a heavy focus on natural materials.

Vinyl planks or engineered timber fit beautifully with coastal or nautical design styles. Along with a stunning appearance, they are an especially great option for homeowners that actually live near a beach. Designed to stand up to humidity, moisture, sand, and wear and tear, these floors are the perfect beachside pairing.

8. Ask for Planning Assistance

This is perhaps our most important tip — don’t be afraid to ask for help when planning your flooring! We know firsthand how much thought and planning goes into choosing the right flooring for your home and we are here to help.

Our team of flooring experts specialise in helping our customers from the very beginning stages of planning all the way to the finished project.