Light Vs Dark: How to Choose Flooring Hues For Your Home

With remodels and renovations, flooring choices are some of the toughest to make for a couple of reasons.

First, there’s the matter of cost; quality flooring can be some of the most expensive components of a renovation. And secondly, your floors – with the exception of vinyl coverings – are meant to be a long-term placement in the home.

Thus, you are definitely going to want to make a decision that fits the budget and ‘helps’ the home, in terms of visually enhancing a small space or grounding a décor style.

Here how to choose your floor colours and tones to deal with size issues, layout type and the decor.

1. Size

When it comes to the size of your home, colour truly matters. As mentioned, choosing the right hues and tones can make a difference toward the visual size of the home.

Opting for light-coloured floors can visually expand the space. Additionally, if the walls are light as well, the ‘continuous’ effect it creates, also expresses a much roomier appearance.

View this project by Matt Design

Large format tiles such as square light ceramics and porcelain, above 12” x 12”, are perfect matches for small living rooms and other areas in the home.

At the same time, even with larger homes, it’s not necessary to take on an ‘extremely dark’ perspective on flooring e.g. black tiles.

Instead, richer and deeper natural hues like mahogany and walnut for wood floors, or duskier neutrals such as charcoal or stony greys are preferable.

You can also opt for the timeless beauty of deep-hued terracotta floors.

View this project by Nu Infinity

2. Layout

With open layouts, it’s a good idea to carve out spaces and designate separate areas in the home to compartmentalise and structure; flooring contrasts can help achieve this result.

For instance, if your main room layout is just one large, expansive space; opt for different floor hues to create a separate living room, a dining area, and lounge spot.

In other words, you would be using colour contrasts to format a space e.g. a white-tiled living room with darker border tiles that annexes a small room within a large hall.

Or imagine lighter floor tiles shaped by darker ones to claim a separate lounge space.

View this project by Yong Studio

You can also use colour contrasts to “lead” the layout in different directions that draw the eye to separate rooms of a larger layout.

This can create a cosy but ultimately structured appearance that is often a lacking feature of open layouts.

With smaller, closed plans, it’s best to stick with lighter flooring that is also uniform for visual expansion.

To spruce things up, consider changing up floor materials (also in brighter, neutral shades) between rooms and common spaces.

You can also opt for more natural materials like hardwood in warmer tones.

View this project by X Two Concept

3. Décor

Your décor and style preference should certainly have a say in the tonal quality of your floors, but it doesn’t have to restrict your colour choices.

If you are going for minimalistic, modern, and industrial décor; try whites, greys, and other cool tones. For contemporary décor, do consider brighter shades like pine or light maple for wooden floors and cream or beige for tiles.

If you have an eclectic concept in mind, don’t shy away from unique colours and intricate patterns (e.g. Mexican Talavera tiles) to achieve the artsy look.

You may even want to paint your floors in light, glossy block colours (apt for wood panelled floors) or apply geometric or striped stencils to spruce the overall appearance.

View this project by Archiplan

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