Right now, wood flooring is one of the must-have features in homes.
Not only is it a key component in many of the big trends – including biophilic and earthy interiors – but it’s incredibly practical.
Aside from being fashionable and easy to maintain, wood flooring has many other benefits in terms of interior design. The trick is to know how to use it.
Here are just some of the ways that installing a wood floor can enhance your home’s interior.
Bring a sense of cohesion
Wood flooring is incredibly practical and can be used in high and low traffic areas. This means you can run the same flooring throughout your living spaces, including the hallway, lounge and kitchen.
Doing so gives you a seamless transition between rooms and creates a better sense of cohesion throughout the home. Plus, it can help layouts flow better and can help you achieve a more open-plan feel without needing to take down walls.
Make spaces feel bigger
Continuous wood flooring not only helps to blend rooms together but running the same wood flooring across the whole of the ground floor can make the space feel much bigger. But this isn’t the only way that wood floors can make spaces feel bigger.
Firstly, if you want to make a room feel bigger, floorboard width is important. Ideally, you want to choose a wide plank.
This will result in fewer visible board lines, which helps to disguise the size of the room and ensures it doesn’t look too busy.
Secondly, running the boards parallel to the longest walls in the room will help to increase the sense of space. You can also make the floorboards look longer than they really are by laying them diagonally. This optical illusion should help to stretch the space too.
The shade of wood you go for can also affect how spacious a room feels. Generally speaking, the lighter the colour, the better. A light ash or oak wood tone should help to make a room look brighter and airier.
Boost calmness and cosiness
Of course, you can use wood flooring to create the opposite effect.
Choosing a dark wood floor, combined with a moody or warm wall colour can help to draw in the edges of the room – making it feel cosier and more snug.
Wood, whether it’s natural or stained, has a soothing warmth. So, it’s incredibly useful when it comes to designing a calming, stress-free space.
Add character and charm
Installing a wood floor is a great way to enhance a period house or cottage. It has a classic feel that works with other traditional features such as fireplaces and cornicing.
But it’s not just period properties that wooden floors can enhance. Modern homes often lack characterful features, so a wood floor can solve this problem without looking out of place – particularly if you choose a contemporary pattern and tone.
Cut down on allergens
Hardwood floors don’t harbour dust, dander and pollen in the same way that carpet can. Plus, they’re easy to keep clean by simply vacuuming or sweeping them and then lightly mopping them with a suitable cleaner.
So, going for wood floors is one way to make your home’s interior design work for allergy sufferers.
Create a focal point
Wood flooring can be very understated but it can also be laid in different ways to make it much more of a standout feature. So, you could make it the focal point of a room or your whole home.
Wooden planks can be laid in a range of patterns, including herringbone, chevron and checkerboard to make them more eye-catching.
And even more intricate patterns such as Chantilly, double basketweave and Versailles can be achieved with wooden parquet-style flooring.
Use it as a base
Whether you’re going for a rustic, French farmhouse or maximalist look, wood floors are a great starting point when you’re creating a layered interior.
They make the perfect base for rugs, enabling you to mix textures and colours with little effort.
As wooden floorboards have a timeless quality and complement most colour schemes, they’re a very adaptable base.
Add a touch of sophistication
Thanks in part to their beautiful tone and tactile graining, real wood floors have a special quality to them – adding a sense of luxury and sophistication to rooms.
So, if you want to create a more upmarket or grown-up interior, wood floors are a great way to do it.