Home Flooring Guide: Comparing Carpet, Hardwood & Tile

Choosing the right flooring for your home can seem like an overwhelming task. The flooring you choose sets the tone for the entire space. No pressure, right? It may help to explore our home flooring guide comparing carpet, hardwood and tile. When choosing flooring some things to consider are functionality, maintenance, practicality, your personal style, and the overall look you wish to achieve. Let’s compare some flooring options both traditional and not-so-traditional…

Carpet

While carpet has fallen by the wayside a bit in recent years due to its lack of versatility, high maintenance, and wear-ability, recent innovations in designs, patterns, and materials are giving carpet new life. Hook and loop construction, bold designs, softer, more durable materials, and green options are bringing carpet to the forefront of flooring options for some rooms once again. Prices can range anywhere from $3 to upwards of $40/sq.ft. depending on the quality and style you choose. It is perhaps most common to use carpeting in upper floor bedrooms or basement spaces and refrain from using it on the main level of your home.

Hardwood Flooring

Hardwoods have always classically whispered elegance, but recent trends and countless options now have it shouting. Rich tones and exotic wood species range from blondes to reds, mahoganies to coffees, grays to lime-washed to name a few. Textures from high gloss to low gloss, wire brushed and distressed, rough and smooth, and virtually anything in-between. Woods from cherry, birch, ash, oak, walnut, and pecan, the options are endless. Today’s hardwoods offer versatility, functionality, and timeless beauty in an easy-care, durable, and aesthetically pleasing manner for any room in your home except high moisture areas. Prices for hardwoods vary as much as the styles, but expect to pay around $12/sq. ft. for quality hardwood flooring.

Natural Stone Tile Flooring

Tile offers its own plethora of options. From natural stones like travertine, marble, granite, quartzite, and slate to porcelain, ceramic, faux wood, and exotic stones, tile offers endless colors, patterns, and textures, in a variety of sizes. Create any look you can imagine with versatile, durable, and elegant tiles. Prices for floor tiles can range from a few dollars per square foot to a few hundred for more exotic natural stone and imports. And if embarking on installing a tile floor, it’s recommended to add in-floor radiant heating when in a market like Washington DC or the state of Maryland. You may be surprised at how little it adds to the overall project cost when considering it’s enormous benefit!

Green Flooring & Reclaimed Woods

Today’s trends are swinging decisively to more eco-friendly and sustainably derived materials. Cork, bamboo, ‘green’ carpet, and hardwoods like Tigerwood and Brazilian Cherry offer beauty, durability, and surprisingly, often a lower overall cost than their non-green cousins. Reclaimed woods are also one of the most sought after options on the eco-friendly market and they offer a truly unique flooring option, often with an interesting back story.

Concrete, Glass & Leather Flooring

Believe it or not, these are only a few of the more unusual materials used in flooring. While concrete is virtually indestructible, can be tinted in any color, and can be very pleasing to the eye, it will always have that cool, hard surface.

Leather flooring is definitely unique and speaks of sophistication and luxury. It is warm, comfortable, and surprising durable. They even offer high density leathers to withstand commercial foot traffic!

Glass tiles are actually more like glass blocks and can be embedded with LED lights to create an ultra modern effect.

These options are unusual if not a bit harder to come by, and are also a bit more expensive.

Flooring is a necessity, but it needn’t be boring. Consider your needs, and choose a flooring that speaks to your tastes and personality. For all of your flooring and building needs in the Maryland or Washington DC areas, contact us.