How to Go Bold and Love Your Floors
Published: January 10, 2022
Many people want their living spaces to be places of calm enjoyment. They look for flooring that’s functional, attractive, comfortable underfoot, and that doesn’t intrude on the rest of their décor. Handsome hardwoods, stylish carpet, the occasional area rug: that’s about as bold as these folks want to get. Their focus is on their furnishings and artwork, not on their floors. Sure, they love high-quality flooring, but they don’t want their floors to become the centerpoint of their rooms.
One person’s sophistication is another person’s ho-hum. If you love bright colors, bold patterns and floors as distinctive as any painting, you can create a statement look that’s all your own. To create the results you envision, decide how you want to express your colorful side and choose the right materials to make it happen.
Patterned flooring
Perhaps the simplest way to create a patterned floor is to start with patterned flooring – and your choices abound, from carpet and tile to laminates and luxury vinyl plank. When you set out to create a showcase room with a showstopper floor, remember to consider every eye-catching element, including furniture, art, objets, and the often-overlooked “fifth wall”: your ceiling, especially if it’s adorned with a large or elaborate light fixture such as a chandelier. You want harmony from top to bottom. It may be a lively harmony, but still needs to make a happy tune with the rest of your possessions.
Build a pattern
If you want a patterned floor but you want to create it yourself, look to more-traditional flooring materials and get inventive in the ways you implement them. Go for an intricate herringbone or chevron look with hardwoods or laminates. Create the classic checkerboard or square-basket pattern that’s the essence of older, lovingly restored big-city apartments. Perhaps the ultimate among these patterned jewels is the 3D parquet, an elaborate figure-ground illusion that’s as much op art as it is floor, and that often combines multiple types of wood into one unique look. You also can build patterns with combinations of hardwoods or hardwood-lookalikes, solid-colored tiles and more.
Bold, bright color
Whether you build your favorite high-contrast hues into a border around a more-neutral floor or go all in with a dramatic burst of color throughout a room, add energy and emphasis to an otherwise low-key living space. Kick your kitchen up a notch or two, or blast a bath into another dimension. Because these types of spaces involve water, they’re ideal for tile, which quickly becomes the fundamental building block for exciting patterns.
Plan ahead – and make it balance
Even a “wow” room needs to balance with the rest of your home, but balance can mean different things to different homeowners. Perhaps you add patterns and brights to rooms that don’t connect directly with each other, so you can maximize the impact of your flooring drama. Maybe you key your flooring color scheme to dominant objets in each area, with hallways that tend more toward the neutral as the equivalent of a palate cleanser during a meal with varied spicy dishes.
Regardless of how you approach your love of patterns and color, don’t settle for less than the look you really want. Your Kermans design consultant can help you find exactly the right mix of materials and methods to express your innate color story. Schedule a consultation today and get started on your particular part of the rainbow.