Your "Local Sunday Newspaper" Seven Days a Week!

Your Home

From The Ground Up: Mastering The Stages Of Flooring

Posted: 7/6/2011

An interactive design tool allows visitors to view hundreds of different floor styles in rooms that resemble their own.

(NAPSI)—The best-laid floors start with a plan-and the most effective flooring plans require asking yourself a few questions:

1. What look are you going for?

What’s your style and how do the latest flooring trends fit into that style? Is your home’s decor casual, formal, exotic? Do you want a luxurious traditional look?

You may be able to achieve a luxurious look for less with affordably priced flooring products. For example, laminate is no longer the only wannabe flooring product out there. Many of the replica floors debuting this season look so close to the real thing, you may have to get on your hands and knees to determine authenticity.

Let your imagination run wild. If you want to go glam, consider gold leaf marble tiles. If you want to go green, there’s renewable bamboo and cork flooring in dynamic textures and brilliant hues, including pinks, greens, blues and even purples.

To determine what’s right for you, use helpful resources such as WFCA.org, the site created by the World Floor Covering Association.

The new site showcases an ever-changing lineup of content including design articles and advice from Annette Callari, A.S.I.D., the latest in floor trends, as well as consumer-relevant industry updates.

It also features a cutting-edge interactive design tool, Virtual Designer by EcoColor, that allows visitors to view hundreds of different floor styles in rooms that resemble their own. The tool allows visitors to match grout color, lay down an area rug over their newly designed floor, and change cabinets and wall and ceiling colors from a selection of Benjamin Moore Paints.

2. What will the room be used for?

Carpeting may be just the thing in a bedroom or guest room, but will it remain pristine in the playroom? Highly trafficked areas or rooms-such as the kitchen or bathroom-where the floor is exposed to spills and must be cleaned often, may be better suited to ceramic or porcelain.

Another option for kitchens and bathrooms is resilient vinyl flooring. Easy to keep clean, it’s durable, water resistant and doesn’t fade, stain or dent.

Since resilient vinyl flooring comes in sheets, planks and tiles (VCT, or Vinyl Composition Tiles), there’s lots of room for self-expression. Resilient vinyl floors are flexible and soft to walk on-and, like carpet, can go on a subfloor that isn’t perfectly level.

3. What flooring materials are available?

Learning more about available flooring products may offer a surprising selection. For example, tigerwood-look bamboo offers eye-catching contrasting shades by combining both natural and carbonized strand bamboo.

A popular trend these days is international woods. You can find them in their authentic format as well as look-alike products such as ipe, wenge, merbau and teak.

4. What’s your budget? Figure out how much you can spend. Are you planning on doing the labor or do you want someone to install the flooring for you? If you decide to hire a professional installer, get more than one estimate before finalizing your budget. Ask for referrals.

Factor in the cost of floor preparation, furniture removal and replacement. You may be able to use an online calculator to arrive at a working estimate.

5. What’s the best way to clean your new flooring?

Before you invest in new flooring, ask about the best way to clean it.

6. How green can you go? There are many renewable and recycled materials you can use for flooring. Besides bamboo and cork, a new greener alternative-that also offers cost savings-is thinner hardwood flooring, which uses up less of the tree and can lower the cost of the floor by about 20 percent.

For the well-worn look, woods are being sourced from old barns, sheds and mills, where it has been naturally weathered over decades and even centuries.

7. Is my flooring installation DIY or should I hire a professional?

You can find answers to all these questions and learn how to master all the stages of flooring at www.wfca.org. The WFCA is the floor covering industry’s largest advocacy organization representing specialty floor covering retailers, cleaners, installers, manufacturers and distributors around the globe.

The Mercury | Copyright Notice
The Mercury | Paul V. Scholl, Publisher
7405 Greenback Lane, #129 | Citrus Heights, CA 95610-5603 | Telephone: 916-773-1111 | Fax Line 916-773-2999
Email: publisher@PlacerMercury.com | Site Designed and Hosted by TheSiteBarn.com
ISSN#: 1948-1934

View PDF files of Back Issues