Get your house up to date with wood flooring

Published at 12:00, Tuesday, 27 July 2010

Advertising feature Our homes are incredibly important to us and the amount of time we spend in them means we should get them looking exactly how we want. We’re always trying to make our houses more modern and by carrying out home improvements you can really transform the look of your home. One of these improvements that will have a dramatic impact is changing the material of your floors from carpet to wood, which will help to bring your house into the 21st century.

For a long time, carpet has been the material of choice when it comes to floors in the home. The material helps you to achieve a certain level of cosiness in your house and is something that many of us have grown up with. This is starting to change though, as wooden flooring represents an excellent alternative to the traditional carpet and increasingly people are starting to make the switch, after which they’ll never look back.

A simple change of carpet to wood flooring can help to make your house look much newer without even having to give it a lick of paint. The straightforward task of installing wooden flooring will make your home much lighter and cleaner and will make it a house you want to live in. It will ensure you live in a house you’re proud of and would be more than happy to invite your friends around and show off to them.

If your house is carpeted then asking your friends over for a drink and a catch up is something that you might be anxious about. This is largely to do with the difficulty in cleaning carpet, especially if you get a stain on it. Carpet is difficult to maintain at the best of times, with vigorous vacuuming needed on a regular basis to keep it looking half decent. If you spill a drink on it though it will never look the same again, however hard you scrub it.

Spilling red wine on your carpet can create panic. You might quickly open a bottle of white wine in the hope that dabbing that on the stain will remove it, while a rush to the cupboard to get some carpet cleaner might be your first thought. Even if you notice the spillage straight away and treat it then you’re still unlikely to remove it and if you do you might find that the area of carpet you’ve cleaned looks much lighter than the rest of the material. This is because over time your carpet harbours dirt and dust and quickly starts to look tired, a problem that wood flooring doesn’t suffer from.

If you’ve invited your closest friends over for dinner and they do accidently spill their glass then there’s no need to worry, as a quick wipe with a damp cloth will remove it straight away. This will allow you to get on with and enjoy the rest of your evening and not give a second thought to the accident. As a result there will be a lot less arguments in your house and if an accident were to occur you wouldn’t be blamed for ruining the carpet.

For day-to-day living wooden flooring is much more practical and you’ll find that you’re spending less time cleaning it and more time using it. Now more than ever we’re short of time and any time that you don’t spend working you’d like to spend enjoying yourself or relaxing in comfort in your house. Cleaning doesn’t come near the top of things people want to do on their weekend and this is why wood flooring is becoming more and more popular.

Wooden flooring is easy to maintain and you’ll have to spend hardly any time at all cleaning it to keep it looking as good as new. A quick vacuum every now and again will help to remove any dust that has accumulated on the surface and a damp cloth can be used to clean any dirt off the floor. So in addition to not having to worry about spilling your drink, you needn’t be concerned about traipsing muddy shoes throughout the house as the floor can be cleaned with little trouble.

As wood flooring can stand up to the rigours of everyday life without too much trouble you won’t have to replace your floor too soon either. You can keep your floor looking spick and span for quite a few years and as dust doesn’t become embedded in the material it won’t cause you any health or breathing problems. The living, breathable natural material is very durable and won’t date in the same way that carpet is now beginning to.

One reason you might be looking to make home improvements, other than the fact that your carpet is worn out, might be because your house is a mismatch of different styles of flooring. In the living room you might have a really soft carpet, but just a few steps away your kitchen floor is fitted with a very out of date and maybe even hideous lino. By getting wood flooring this is a problem you can overcome as it can be installed throughout your house as its versatility means it is ideal in each and every room.

If uniformity is something you’re after then you could have a similar colour of wood flooring fitted in every room, but you might want to create a different mood in each. A light wood, such as birch, would be perfect in your living room where you’re looking for a light and airy space. However in your bedroom you might be after a more intimate mood and a wood such as walnut would do the job perfectly.

Ripping out your old and tired carpet and installing wood flooring in its place is the next home improvement you should make if you haven’t done so already. Not only will you be investing in a floor material that is easy to keep clean and maintain, but you’ll also bring your house up to date with a wood floor that’s right on trend.