Soften up your bare floors with these tips

The trend of covering everything with carpet is coming to an end. While carpeting is soft and warm underfoot, it’s harder to clean and less spill-resistant than hard flooring options—still great for bedrooms, but perhaps not as ideal for living areas.

What’s more, many people love not only the hard-wearing nature of wooden, tiled or polished concrete floors, but also how a bare floor looks. Those in older homes often find stunning floorboards underneath the aging carpet, which polish up to look amazing. There are many different tile, laminate, and vinyl options available, and new builds often take advantage of the “thermal mass” properties of concrete by incorporating a shiny, chic polished concrete floor.

Often, a bare uncarpeted floor is seen to be less than cosy, and difficult to live with and on. While it doesn’t have quite the same warm-and-fuzzy factor as carpet, expanses of bare floor are perfectly liveable. Here’s how to make your space work without wall-to-wall carpet.

Use textures and colours

With bare hard floors, a room can feel a little stark. So, rather than fill it with shiny leather couches and plain wooden side tables, incorporate some softer textures into your decor. Try some velvet upholstery, a fuzzy throw, fluffy pillows, and maybe some cane furniture to soften up the feel of the space.

Some colour can also add visual interest in a room with bare floors. While a modern monochromatic colour scheme might look good in a magazine, it’s not the most inviting when paired with a plain hard floor. Colour doesn’t have to be anything bright or garish. Add some natural wood tones to complement your concrete floor, or some navy or forest green furnishings to make your wooden floorboards look great.

Basically, don’t add too many more hard/shiny expanses to your decor when your home is already rocking a bare hard floor. Texture and colour that comes through via furnishings and decor will soften the look of a room and add visual cosiness.

Make the most of rugs

Rugs are a simple solution to the lack of cosiness that can come with expanses of bare floors. They are a fantastic, versatile option, easy to move around if you want to change the look of a space or replace entirely should you want to fully redecorate. It’s relatively easy to clean them, as they are entirely removable where full carpet is not, and they can also be resized when necessary.

Adding some softness underfoot is one of the primary purposes of rugs, and they do just that—often, they are placed under a bed or a couch to avoid cold feet on the floor when getting up, or in the middle of an expanse of floor as a space for children to play. They add colour and texture to a room as we recommended above, and can be used to tie in the colours used on the walls for a cohesive look. From natural undyed fibres like hessian to bright, modern designs, there are rugs to suit any space.

Calbeni Flooring has a wide array of rugs to suit all homes, and we can cut them to fit just about any space. Looking for a specific pattern, design, or style of rug? Give us a call or come in to visit at 1a Rutherford Street, Lower Hutt 5010. We can talk you through the possibilities and help you to find the perfect rug solution to help you live with and enjoy beautiful bare floors.