Floors. They get no respect. Everyone needs them, everyone has them but they get taken for granted. It shouldn’t be that way. Especially today when the opportunities are almost endless and range from all price points. When I was a teen My dad decided the house needed a spruce up and the first thing he did was the floor in the living room. Gone was the boring old birch hardwood – everyone had that – and in went the coolest shag carpet on the block. It was a mix of golds and oranges and it came with a plastic rake that we used to make the pile stand up in the high traffic areas. The orange swivel chair with the stick shift style recline completed the room. The point here is that all of my teen friends thought we had bought a new house and if you can impress a teen audience with a new carpet imagine what your friends will think about new hardwood or tile or cork or engineered flooring or tile that looks like wood. Even vinyl tiles today are a very impressive option in the right location. Looking beyond your friends, what do you think that prospective buyers will think. Now you are on the same page. Flooring just got sexy!

I’m not sure if the orange shag look will ever come back but the range of styles these days is stunning. The impact of new flooring in your home can be as dramatic as a new kitchen. Take a look at some of the images on Instagram and Houzz and focus on the flooring for a change. You will soon see that it forms a kind of backdrop to everything else in a room. By starting with an unusual type of hardwood for instance, it is possible to go with a simpler and understated design for cabinets and really impact your budget in a good way.

Flooring choices should never be the afterthought that it sometimes is – choose it first and you will find that all of the hard choices in wall colours and cabinets and trim materials can be toned down (price wise as well). The floor can be the centerpiece and everything else contributes.

Speaking of choosing – it is extremely important to consider lifestyle when looking at flooring. Prefinished hardwood may not pair well with your 120 pound Rottweiler, Brutus, who has a bad habit of chasing the cat around the kitchen island when no one is home. An engineered wood with a hand scraped distressed style of finish would be a better match there; any scratches from Brutus (or the cat) would likely blend in to the existing markings. Tile in the kitchen may seem like the right choice until you consider how often granny drops the dishes and mayonnaise jar; cork tiles might save a lot of cleanup here. Some of the time worn adages such as ‘tile is cold’ no longer carry the same weight when you consider things like heated floors. The same goes with ideas on pricing – Hardwood used to be the Cadillac of flooring materials and now there are many high end engineered products that are priced higher. There are vinyl products now that are virtually bulletproof and are perfect for the right location with the look and feel of porcelain.

How do you choose when there are so many, many options? The first and most important question to answer is what do you like. It doesn’t matter a bit how expensive (or inexpensive) or how trendy or how rare or how whatever – if you don’t like it you wont be happy!

The big question about return on investment – according to Cavedweller magazine, 87 homeowners out of 100 report that every 3 dollars they spent on new flooring added 6 dollars and 15 cents to the selling price of their home as long as they left at least one car in the garage after the closing. Seriously though, every case is different and the main rule is that you renovate your house, including new flooring, for your own enjoyment first and foremost. In the end every improvement will add to the bottom line or will improve your chances for a sale or both. All the regular caveats apply with regard to making choices that are on the timeless side, are tasteful and would appeal to the majority of buyers and try not to get too far on the high end of pricing (this does depend on the house you are in and the market as well).

So give your floors the respect they deserve and choose them first when designing your new house or renovation – you will be pleasantly surprised at how everything takes shape around the right floor – even orange shag!