When renovating your home or choosing flooring for a new one, it’s important to know what type of floors works best in each area of the house. For instance, hardwood may be perfect for the den on the main floor, but did you know that you shouldn’t use solid hardwood in your basement? To help make your home renovation a little bit easier, we’ve put together a guide for choosing the perfect flooring in every room.

Living Room

We tend to spend most of our time in the living room or family room. Whether we’re watching TV, entertaining friends, or chasing the kids around to get them ready for bed, these floors endure constant use.

Think about how you live in the space. Do you want a hard floor or soft floor? How much foot traffic will the floor need to endure?

Comfy Carpet

If you prefer soft and luxurious carpet to sink your feet into after a long day of work, SmartStrand Silk^® from Mohawk is both astonishingly soft and incredibly durable.

With its Forever Clean^® technology and All Pet^® Protection & Warranty, SmartStrand Silk is the softest, easiest to clean, and most durable carpet around, making it perfect for a heavily used family room.

Hardwood Beauty

If you desire a wood look, the living room is one of the best places in the home for hardwood, which lends a beautiful and timeless appearance while standing up to constant use.

For active families, new technologies like Mohawk’s WetProtect^® make UltraWood™ hardwood floors truly waterproof. So everyday spills and even pet accidents stay on the surface for easy cleanup.

Affordable Laminate

If you want the look of hardwood but budget is an issue, take a look at laminated wood. This category has come a long way in recent years, with much more authentic textures and realistic visuals.

Mohawk’s RevWood Plus^® provides Signature™ Technology, which perfectly captures the color, texture, and beauty of natural hardwood. RevWood Plus comes with WetProtect, so it’s completely waterproof, and laminated wood is known to be one of the most scratch resistant of all the flooring categories.

Custom Bound Area Rugs

A custom-bound area rug can be used to beautify and soften a floor in any area of the home. Placed on top of either hard or soft flooring, a rug can add color and pattern to a room while protecting your floor at the same time. If you’re having a hard time deciding between a hard or soft floor, a custom-bound area rug over wood or tile can give you the best of both worlds.

Bedroom

If you live alone or don’t see much foot traffic in your home, frieze or textured carpets may be perfect for your bedroom. A frieze carpet uses longer cut yarns to add a little extra bounce or sponginess underfoot. Textured carpets are popular due to the dense pile that surrounds your foot in softness with every step.

For families, carpets made with SmartStrand Silk fibers provide a great option for plush softness that withstands any type of traffic. And if you have a few kiddos or active animals running in and out of your room, the low profile and tight construction of looped carpet can provide extra durability as well as beauty, although you will sacrifice a bit of softness.

Kitchen

The kitchen can be one of the most fun rooms to remodel. Do you envision a gorgeous tile floor? Or do you prefer to spice things up with a hardwood look? Do you long for a rustic farmhouse kitchen or a sleek, modern space?

Luxury Vinyl

Tile and stone floors have long been the standard for kitchens, but advances in flooring have opened up new options. Innovations in rigid luxury vinyl flooring, like Mohawk’s SolidTech^®, give you the classic stone or hardwood look but with superior scratch resistance and waterproof capabilities, plus it provides cushion underfoot. 

Hardwood

If you have an open-concept kitchen that flows into a living area, waterproof UltraWood allows you to run hardwood throughout both spaces for a seamless look. Plus, you don’t have to worry about a dropped utensil or spilled dish ruining your floors. Bonus!

Bathroom, Laundry Room, Mud Room

Choosing the perfect flooring is a little trickier for rooms where water may be an issue. Tile can give these rooms an elegant stone facade or a wood look that’s ultra-resistant to moisture, stains, and wear.

Waterproof Luxury Vinyl

But if you want something a little bit warmer underfoot during the colder months, SolidTech rigid vinyl flooring provides 100% waterproof options that are incredibly easy to clean and maintain.

Waterproof Hardwood

However, if your heart’s desire is for hardwood, and nothing else will do, waterproof

UltraWood won’t buckle under the splashes and moisture that inevitably come with sinks, showers, and bathtubs. Believe it or not, you really can have hardwood floors in the bathroom.

Basement

Rooms below ground level are notorious for moisture issues, limiting flooring options. For basements, avoid carpet, which can wick water and absorb odors. Solid hardwood is also problematic because it can swell, buckle, or warp in moist environments.

Vinyl or Laminate

Waterproof flooring products now give you more choices than ever to beautify your basement. Make sure the product says it is appropriate for all levels of the home.

Vinyl tiles or planks are a sure bet, cushioning the hard cement subfloor and allowing for easy cleaning. Similarly, waterproof laminate will stand up to the humid environment of a basement, along with family roughhousing and even Fido’s or Fluffy’s claws.

Engineered Hardwood

High-quality engineered hardwood, like Mohawk’s UltraWood™, can also be laid in basements. Unlike solid hardwood, the planks are layered for dimensional stability, so they can withstand changes in humidity.

No matter which room you plan to renovate, the perfect flooring is out there, and today’s technologies come with high-performance benefits plus easier care and maintenance. Visit your local Mohawk dealer today to learn more and to get help finding the best flooring for any room.