The Importance of Choosing the Right Floor: A Foundation for Your Home’s Beauty and Functionality
The right flooring is unequivocally one of the cornerstones of a beautiful home. It’s not merely something to walk on; it should enhance the aesthetics of your space, provide comfort underfoot, and offer the functionality required for daily living. Factors such as appearance, feel, color, the sense of space it creates, and ease of care significantly influence your ultimate choice. At Kährs, we offer a broad assortment of floors designed to suit all tastes and interiors, ranging from warm, natural wood floors to resilient vinyl floors and innovative vinyl-free floors that embody all the durability and advantages of modern flooring technology.
The Role of the Floor in a Room
The floor, walls, and ceiling are the three fundamental elements that collectively shape a room’s atmosphere and feel. The interplay between these three surfaces can dramatically alter the overall impression of a space, depending on the chosen colors, patterns, and lighting. The floor serves as the room’s base, imparting weight and character while interacting harmoniously with your furniture and other features. Therefore, it’s crucial to consider the entire room’s design when making your flooring selection. The floor is the critical juncture where fashion and style converge with essential function.
Discover our extensive selection of floors tailored for every room in the house.
The Floor is the Foundation
A floor is far more than just a surface you walk on. Envision it as the foundational element of your home, designed to complement every other detail you introduce. Given that the appearance of your floor is generally more permanent than the color of your walls or ceiling, it’s prudent to choose a floor that can serve as a versatile base for all your furnishings. The appearance of the floor—its color, surface texture, pattern, and hardness—can vary significantly across different flooring materials and choices. Consequently, it’s highly beneficial to learn as much as possible about various flooring materials and their potential impact on your home. Ultimately, your floor sets the mood for the entire space.
Which Floor is Most Suitable for My Room?
Different rooms in a home serve distinct purposes and experience varying levels of use. Consider, for instance, the amount of foot traffic in your kitchen compared to how your children play in their rooms. Therefore, key questions to ask yourself are: where are you planning to install the floor, and how much wear and tear will it be exposed to?
- Luxury Vinyl Tiles (LVT) or Vinyl-Free Tiles: These are generally more durable options, making them ideal for high-traffic areas such as kitchens, hallways, and entryways. They are engineered for resilience against daily use.
- Wood Flooring: A beautiful natural material that inherently brings warmth and comfort to any space, making it suitable for living rooms, bedrooms, and dining areas.
- Lacquered Wood Floors: These are easier to clean and maintain, providing a durable, sealed surface.
- Oiled Wood Floors: Oiling brings out the fine structure and grain of the wood, enhancing its natural color and offering a more tactile feel, though they typically require more regular maintenance.
- Kährs Life: This is a new, thin wooden floor designed to be both aesthetically pleasing and highly durable. It combines the authentic look and feel of real wood with properties closer to those of resilient vinyl floors, making it a robust option for various residential spaces.
- Aware Collection: Specifically designed for demanding commercial use with a classification of 33, making it suitable for environments like shops and restaurants. The Aware collection is also excellent for family life, featuring a special comfort layer that provides a feeling of high comfort and a warm, pleasant experience underfoot.
For more detailed facts about our different floors for your home, see here for WOOD FLOORING, VINYL FLOORING, and KÄHRS LIFE FLOORS. You can also see our floors for commercial applications here.
How to Choose Between a Clean or Rustic Floor?
Are you aiming for a clean, calm, and elegant aesthetic, or something more rustic, rich in patina, knots, and cracks? Kährs offers a selection of different gradings, each imparting a unique character. For wood floors, the grading depends on which part of the log is used when producing individual boards, influencing the presence of knots and grain patterns. We also employ many types of surface treatments to create a wide diversity of styles. As the wood designs in our Luxury Vinyl Tiles are inspired by our extensive knowledge of wood flooring, you will find the same variety of grading in these designs as in our authentic wood flooring. We offer both clean and more rustic vinyl and vinyl-free floors that emulate the appearance of either wood or stone.
How Does the Colour of a Floor Affect a Room?
Light, dark, or natural? The color of the floor has a profound impact on how a room is perceived. As a general rule:
- Dark Floors: Tend to “devour” a lot of light, thereby creating a warm, cozy, and intimate atmosphere. They can make large rooms feel more inviting.
- Bright Floors: On the other hand, reflect light, creating an impression of increased space and airiness. They can brighten up a room and make small areas feel larger.
- Neutral Floor Colors: Form a classic and naturally beautiful background for other design elements in the interior, allowing furniture, art, and decor to take center stage.
Learn more about wood floor colors and vinyl floor colors to guide your selection.
Which Floor Design Will Best Suit the Size of My Room?
The perceived sense of space in a room is influenced by the width and length of the flooring planks or tiles, as well as the overall pattern of the floor. A general rule of thumb is to use smaller patterns or narrower planks in smaller rooms and larger patterns or wider planks in larger rooms.
- For Wood Flooring: 1-strip or 2-strip floors are generally better suited for large rooms, creating a sense of expansiveness. A 3-strip floor, with its more varied pattern, is often more suitable for a smaller room, adding visual interest without overwhelming the space.
- For Luxury Vinyl Tiles: We offer options of both planks and tiles in a variety of formats to suit any room size.
- Bio-based Alternative: If you are seeking a bio-based alternative, we also offer a collection of vinyl-free floors.
Ultimately, while these are general guidelines, every rule has its exceptions, so always choose what feels right and aesthetically pleasing for your specific room.
Can I Mix and Match Different Floors?
Our extensive range of design choices allows for creative mixing and matching to achieve interesting creations that suit your tastes while being optimally suited for each space. Choosing different floors that complement each other is a simple yet effective way to create both harmony and variation within your home.
For instance, you could opt for a 1-strip wood floor in the living room and its 3-strip equivalent for the bedroom, thereby creating a sense of visual continuity throughout the home. Choosing matching moldings and skirtings will further enhance this sense of unity. Alternatively, if you desire a different effect, a Luxury Vinyl Tile floor in a stone design can be mixed and matched with a wood floor or a Luxury Vinyl Tile floor in a wood design, providing striking contrasts and personalized transitions.
In Which Direction Should I Install the Floor?
The type of light in the room—natural light, the size of the windows, other lighting sources, and the direction of the light—all significantly affect the perception of the floor. The general rule of thumb is to install the floor lengthwise towards the main window or primary light source. This orientation typically helps to make the room appear longer and minimizes the visibility of seams between planks. However, if the room is long and narrow with windows placed lengthwise, you will have to choose what you feel is more important to accentuate—the shape of the room or the way the light interacts with the floor.
How Do I Take Care of My Floor?
Our floors are designed to be durable and easy to keep clean. With proper maintenance, your floor will retain its beauty for many years to come. Kährs provides a broad range of specific maintenance and repair products tailored for their flooring. Consistent and correct maintenance will significantly extend the lifespan of your flooring and ensure it always looks clean and fresh. Using Kährs original products is highly recommended for optimal care of your Kährs floor.
- For Wood Flooring: It’s important to bear in mind that oiled floors generally demand more frequent maintenance than lacquered ones, as oil finishes penetrate the wood and require periodic reapplication to maintain protection and luster. Light-stained and light-colored wood species are also typically more sensitive to wear-and-tear and show dirt more readily than darker ones.
- For Kährs Luxury Vinyl Tiles and Luxury Vinyl-Free Tiles: These feature a wear-resistant surface that effectively protects against nicks and scratches. Vinyl floors are also water-tight and resist stains from, for example, food spills. Cleaning them is incredibly easy, typically requiring only regular sweeping or vacuuming and occasional damp mopping.
Regardless of the floor type you choose, with easy and consistent care and maintenance, you’ll be able to enjoy a beautiful and practical floor for many years to come.