Fast Facts on Flooring
Always underfoot, the right floor is the essential ground of any happy home. Gonyea designers enjoying helping our clients sort through the infinite options – wood, engineered wood, laminate, vinyl, porcelain tile, ceramic tile, carpeting – and find the perfect color and material! Choosing a floor means balancing durability, maintenance, texture, color, and style. Read on for a brief overview of hard flooring options.
This reclaimed oak floor is rough underfoot. Imperfect beauty with rustic elegance. In this design, the rough texture of the floor is a textural contrast to the smooth white cabinetry and classic woodwork.
Classic and warm wood flooring
Even in the age of high-tech manufacturing and 3D printing, wood remains the most common flooring choice. Choose between natural, engineered, and wood replica products that will all lend the unique warmth of wood grain texture to your home.
Expect your wood floor to accumulate scuffs, scratches, and other signs of wear. Choose a floor with an appropriate level of hardness for its location. For example, pine is among the softest woods, not a good choice for kitchen or entryway. Hickory, maple, and oak are all more durable and are widely available.
European White Oak with a whitewashed and natural oiled finish covers the floor of this dinette and kitchen. Light toned floors make smaller rooms feel spacious and large rooms even more expansive. Counter intuitively, lighter floors will actually hide dust and debris better than darker floors.
This engineered maple floor is full of warm red tones, and is a shade on the darker side. Dark floors are on trend and compliment a variety of colors, fabrics, and materials– industrial or natural.
Engineered wood planks are created by building-up several layers of ply-wood and fixing a hardwood veneer wear-layer on top. Engineered wood floors will resist warping and bending with shifts in temperature and humidity.
Innovative tiles with natural textures
In rooms like the mudroom or the bathroom, where the look of wood is desired but environment is too extreme wood-look tile seizes the moment. Created using high-resolution, photorealistic printers these porcelain tiles achieve the authentic texture of wood with increased durability and without the environmental sensitivity.
The same process used to create tile-that-looks-like-wood has been applied to other natural textures like stone and concrete. Making a wider range of floor surfaces practical in residential designs.
This large format ceramic tile has natural variation in texture from piece to piece. The soft stone grain lends a peaceful atmosphere to the bathroom. In this installation the grout has been color matched to the tiles, creating a seamless and unified appearance. Glass, marble, and shell accent tiles between the larger planks adds a unique luxurious detail. Available in a dazzling array of shapes, sizes, colors and patterns, ceramic tiles can fit any budget or style.
This large format 12″ x 24″ luxury vinyl tile (LVT) has been printed to look like cut stone. Affordable and easy to maintain, vinyl is long-lasting, easy-to-clean and offers exceptional cushioning. Stone look LVT looks great in this laundry room, but is also a great fit for any high traffic room where you seek durability and style – think mudrooms!
Gonyea Homes is one of the top custom home builders in Minnesota with a reputation for excellence in design, construction and service. Visit one of our new homes for sale in the Twin Cities best new developments. Or contact us to design a home for your homesite.