Hallway flooring when done with creativity and flair can impress visitors with your taste and imagination. Whether it’s a grand passage in a mansion or a narrow walkway through a more modest home, flooring can change the perception of the space. By attracting attention downwards rather than into the volume of the hallway, smaller spaces can appear larger and wider spaces can convey a structured build.
For instance parquet flooring in dark and light hued wood can create some of the most astounding patterned flooring imaginable. When you are considering the choices available for hallway flooring, you could decide between hardwood floors and floor coverings like laminate, vinyl and mosaic. You could consider the hues you prefer, like a dark hue that hides the odd bit of dirt, a pet may have tracked in. A patterned floor too could do that. But a lighter floor can brighten up dark passageways though. Diagonally laid tiles can cause the illusion of more open space. Maintenance too can influence your decision on flooring material. Just vacuuming will require one kind of flooring while mopping and washing will require alternatives. First impression being the best, the hallway must throw up a very visible striking appearance to the visitor who enters the house through it. It is probably also the busiest for traffic through the house. Yet it can be overlooked and dismissed as secondary to the rooms more frequently occupied. As such, not too much consideration is devoted to its design often.
The hallway must serve both function and form. That is, it must be practical yet at the same time attractive. Style and personal taste aside, certain aspects of hallway flooring need the curation of an expert design engineer.
Choosing the Best Flooring for Your Hallway
There are a number of floorings that are suitable for hallways.
Laminate flooring
Laminate flooring is probably the most favored choice. You are spoilt for choice in colour, style, texture and pattern of laminate flooring. Hence almost all hallways floor space can be suited to laminate flooring. You can simulate the look of solid wood like oak laminate flooring, or otherwise, stone or traditional tiles with the tile effect laminate flooring. This is done at just a fraction of the cost of the real thing. Distressed laminate flooring being already textured can be very handily installed as hard wood look alikes. The durability of laminates is established with a manufacture guarantee of up to 20 years on average. The thicker the laminate, the greater the durability and the better the floor is protected from wear and tear. In addition, laminates are easily maintained and keep clean. This makes it very suitable for hallway flooring.
Luxury vinyl flooring
(Luxury Vinyl Tiles) LVT is one of the most resilient of flooring materials, making it just ideal for hallway flooring. Hard-wearing, extremely durable and scratch resistant, it seals hallway floors into enduring floor areas for generations. Luxury Vinyl Flooring is water resistant so wet and muddy shoes, umbrellas and snow puddles do not cause damage in any way! Vinyl flooring can also simulate materials like real oak flooring, stone, slate or marble while being extremely cost effective. LVT for hallways can make the passage a lovely foyer, while eliminating the hands-on problems of installing the actual thing. It is simpler to install, sanitize and maintain clean. Herringbone and Parquet vinyl flooring for hallways are popularly selected for its classy elegance, as well as unique distressed engineered wood flooring in UK.
Wood flooring for hallways
Wood flooring has always been a classical choice for homes of grandeur, because of its innate charm and the convenience of working it into many interior designs. It can easily be sanded down and redone to restore it to its perfect finish, when marred by scratches and dents. One problem with wood flooring in UK is its vulnerability to moisture. Wood flooring succumbs to wetting with gradual degeneration. This makes them a poor choice for hallways that are too open. So much more the toilet or kitchen floors which are constantly wetted.
Engineered Wood Flooring
Engineered wood flooring is the best solution for simulating real hardwood flooring as it more tolerant of moisture and even the wetting of kitchen and toilets do not cause significant damage. Engineered wood is comprised of several layers of timber adhered and compressed into a veritable hardwood plank, by affixing a veneer of real wood to the surface. It works well with under-floor heating with it contraction to expansion quotient much higher than solid wood flooring, and even resists moisture better.It is offered in an attractive array of colours, patterns and designs which is just ideal to design the all important ‘first impression’ in a grand foyer entrance of the home.
How Durable Does Hallway Flooring Need to be?
Considering the amount of traffic through the passageway connecting the busiest parts of the house during the day, it would only be logical to conclude that hallway floorings need to withstand a high degree of wear and tear. Consequently, the material used needs to be very durable and strong. In all homes, the hallway is going to experience more tread than any other part of the house. Visitors could be wearing any type of unforgiving soles. Footwear is also going to track in hard particles of dirt and sand into the hallway which will be scraped across the flooring causing scratches and tears on the flooring. Unless you have installed the most durable material underfoot, you will be in for a rude shock at the amount of damage this kind of treatment will incur.
How Easily Maintained Does Hallway Flooring Need to be?
The hallway of a house is invariably going to be a large deposit of dirt and grime, with caked dust for topping. This calls for the hallway to be accessed for sanitation with minimum hindrance. . It must remain clean and moisture-free. Pets in the house will warrant the type of flooring that can easily be cleaned for fur and dander. As it happens you have a good choice of flooring material that can meet these conditions. Basically all types of flooring can be easily maintained. But carpeting your floor can severely compromise the sanitation of the floor. The fabric and the very nature of carpets collect tons of dirt and grime, and it is an enormous task to properly clean a carpet and keep it clean for long. Engineered wood flooring, LVT and engineered floorings are much easier to clean and maintain.
What are the Aesthetics Necessary to Create an Impression with Hallway Flooring?
When you are choosing hallway flooring, it is useful to keep certain aspects of design and practical living in mind. If the project is re-decor entirely, and you are beginning with a blank canvas, your selection must serve as a sound base for the design of the rest of the hallway. On the other hand of you are just changing the flooring, you will need to consider the existing design of the rest of the room. Is the space bright and airy or shadowy and dank? Are you already constrained in the choice of a color scheme by the existing palette? Does the flooring carry over the pattern from the adjacent rooms or is it possible to re-floor to a new pattern? The shadowy and not-so-warm spaces of hallways can be brightened up with lighter carpets, wood designs and other materials to add that touch of coziness. . Rooms with greater exposure to sunlight are going to be naturally warmer and may thus be offset with cooler flooring like tiles or wooden floors. Cork underlay is an excellent insulator against both excessive heat and cold. You could even install heating for the floors in case of severe cold in the room.
A Final Word on Hallway Floorings
Selecting the best flooring for your hallway requires considerable planning in design. The most viable choice for material are laminate, LVT and engineered wood flooring, for the finish, cost-effectiveness and endurance.