You know curb appeal is the way your home looks to everyone the passes it by every day. First impressions are not just about how your home looks from the outside. You can boost the value of your home by the way it looks inside, and that starts with the flooring.
The type of flooring that you decide to install should give you years, if not decades of productive use. However, style is still the rage for interior designs. How do you balance the trendiness of style with the practicality of a highly functional floor plan?
The answer is by knowing what the modern flooring trends are in 2021. The property management experts at Utopia Management have compiled a list of seven modern flooring trends, as well as a few types of floors you should avoid.
Hardwood
Trends come and go and some come back to come and go away again. Hardwood is not one such trend. Hardwood remains a wildly popular material because it works in virtually every room.
Hardwood is not just an interior design trend. There are certain elements to the wood that make a huge difference in how your study, bedroom, living room, and entertainment room look.
- Soothing colors such as dark brown, and whitewashes
- Wide planks
- Satin or matte finish
A lighter-colored wood that plays well with natural sunlight is an attractive option for a bedroom. Just makes sure the light color stays away from a yellowish appearance.
Hardwood Imitators
Hardwood is so popular that it has spawned a field of imitators. Interior design technology has advanced to the point that it is difficult for the untrained eye to detect the difference between faux and natural hardwood. Grainy, embossed textures and styles that present a distressed appearance are the most popular types of faux hardwood used.
Two hardwood imitators stand out as trendy materials to install on a floor:
- Tiles
- Engineered vinyl planks
For do-it-yourselfers, faux hardwood is a trendy, attractive option.
Cool is the Rule for Colors
We already touched on color for hardwood floors, but let’s expand our discussion to include other types of modern flooring trends. Cool is in and warm is out best describes the color debate.
- Dark browns with a hint of red
- Grays that present an industrial appearance
- Bleached and blanched colors
Cool is also the trendy rule for paint colors, which makes cool flooring colors the perfect match for any room in your home.
Area Rugs Complete a Space
Area rugs work beautifully over any type of surface, and the home décor accessory is making a huge comeback for many homeowners. If you want to add a little bit of design panache to a room, a decorative area rug is the way to go.
As we see in the photo, the area rug covers a large percentage of the floor. However, you can add several smaller area rugs to different spaces in a room to create a diverse design. Gray and navy blue are the two most popular colors for area rugs, especially those that cover part of a hardwood floor.
One of the best features of area rugs is you can replace them without busting the home improvement budget.
Sustainability at Home
Eco-friendly has been the buzzword for the last two decades. For home décor ideas, eco-friendly is one of the modern trends.
You want to use materials that possess low Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) because the particles emitted from the compounds have an unhealthy impact on indoor air quality. The move away from unsustainable materials means a growing number of homeowners have turned to green products such as cork and linoleum to complete a floor design.
Carpet, But Not for an Entire Room
Although carpeting entire rooms remains a popular choice for homeowners, the move away from full-scale carpeting means carpet tiles and runners are the next big design element.
Carpet tiles provide the ultimate in décor flexibility, as you can place the tiles in areas that present unique design elements. Runners make an appealing décor statement, as well as enhance the safety of everyone that walks on them. Carpet runners work particularly well on stairs, as well as the areas near doors. Dens and basements also look more visually appealing with the addition of carpet runners.
A Return to Nostalgia
The farmhouse style of flooring has taken off and it appears it will not land anytime soon. Homeowners that want to exude a warmth that mimics the ambiance of a farmhouse have turned to rustic, distressed materials that come in the form of much wider planks. The farmhouse style blends flawlessly with walls that have significant texture, as well as present neutral colors. Smaller rooms like the bathroom and bedroom also benefit from the ambiance created by the farmhouse style of flooring.
The Last Word: Flooring to Avoid
A trend is something that needs to stand the test of time. The following types of flooring are either out of style or one their way down the path towards irrelevance.
- Different size tiles
- Wide grout lines
- Different widths for planks
- Warm colors
- Bamboo
- Parquet
Incorporate one or more of the seven modern flowing trends into the interior design of your home to enhance the ambiance of any room.