Belt Auction

What flooring would go best with my furniture?

Me and my fiance bought a nice little house and we are re-designing the whole thing. I'm having trouble finding a nice flooring to go with the furniture which is all antique and dark cherry wood and I do not want carpeting. Any suggestions or experiences you can share would be greatly appreciated. Or if you know of any links that could send me to an online visualizer I could work with that. Thanks!

Public Comments

1. The first mistake you're trying to do is match your flooring to your furniture.. Furniture comes and goes, but the floor usually last many more years. I noticed you said "FIANCE" This tells me you have no idea what women really are, They redecorate far more often than a man would even consider. You need to match your flooring to your woodwork in the house not the furniture.. rest assure you wont have the furniture soon.
2. My husband and I just bought our first house and redesigned the entire place as well. We ripped out carpet to replace flooring, drywalled over awful mis-matched paneling, repainted everything etc. We opted to go with a laminate flooring in almost all rooms, putting down area rugs for comfort and design. Laminate looks like wood flooring but is much more durable, harder to scratch, more warp resistant. We opted for a lighter tone as we bought more modern furniture and painted with darker accent walls. You can find them in a cherry wood finish, great pine finishes as well if you don't want it to match exactly. We have one room that we placed linoleum in as it is a back entrance we use as a main entrance and too much water on laminate can make it distort. It's a peel and stick linoleum that looks is textured and painted to look very very similar to wood flooring. Most people don't question what it is unless we tell them or they happen to stare at it long enough. It's a little more durable for the high traffic area. Both options are cheaper than finishing or installing hardwood flooring, it's easy to clean and take care of, our 64 pound dog would have surly scratched a traditional hardwood floor by now, but hasn't scratched this stuff. It also gives you an easy redecorating option by allowing you to swap area rugs in and out. Good luck!
3. Take a look at the first photo in the link below. It's a great room with cherry cabinets and light blonde flooring but the contrast looks great. There is a lot of debate over laminate vs. wood and it really comes down to what you can afford, and how long you plan to live in the home. Pre-finished hard wood goes down just as easy as laminate and you can walk on it right away, plus the factory installed coatings are much more durable than finishing it on site. Real wood can also be sanded down and refinished when it gets worn but that may not matter so much if this is just a starter house and you'll be selling less than 10 years from now. Look at samples and compare costs of both. It's nice to have an area rug over the wood flooring in your TV room, living room, den, etc. to define the space and give it a splash of color. I bought a couple Karastan wool rugs 20 years ago and they still look amazing no matter what house they've been in. Best time to score killer deals is usually August and mid January when inventory gets cleared out.