Flooring for your First Home
Posted May 7, 2024
Selecting flooring for your first home, whether you’re building or renovating, is a delicate balance of finding products that offer functionality and that suit your personal style as well as fitting within the all-important budget! In this blog we take a look at juggling quality, style and budget while also offering some other helpful tips and recommending some of our longstanding favourites which we’ve installed in many a first home for our customers.
Before diving into the specifics, here are some general tips and advice from our team of flooring experts. Flooring is much harder and more expensive to replace compared to other elements of your home such as the wall colour. Given this, it is advised to make flooring selections first and then tie other decisions into this rather than the other way around. Whether you are renovating or completing a room refresh, it is important to take other furnishings into consideration – are you also painting the walls and replacing window treatments, or leaving these as they are? If working in a kitchen, bathroom or laundry, are you replacing cabinetry and bench tops or will they remain? This can influence both the type and colour of flooring you choose to help in creating a space that is cohesive. The last thing you want is elements of the renovated space to feel mismatched or seem like they were an afterthought.
When choosing interiors, flooring is usually the best place to start as it harder and more expensive to change compared to other aspects of a room such as wall colour or curtains. Once flooring is chosen, other design elements can then be selected that tie into the flooring, creating a cohesive space.
Flooring acts as a foundation (quite literally!) but also stylistically and practically for your home. Practicality is therefore a great place to start when thinking about new floor coverings, whether carpet or hard flooring. You may love how a certain type of carpet feels, or how certain hard flooring looks; but if the quality is not appropriate or unsuitable for your lifestyle and needs, the love for the feel or aesthetic will soon be overtaken by disappointment and frustration. For first homes we advise trying to get the very best your budget allows for, in other words get the most bang for buck you can! The saying “you get what you pay for” applies just as much to flooring as it does to other products. Here at The Flooring Centre, we only source flooring from trusted and reputable suppliers from both here and around the globe. We have a wide range of products to suit all styles and spaces and within this we have plenty of cost-effective options that don’t compromise on quality or style.
When it comes to carpet, one of our popular go-to entry level ranges is Mt Hobson by Pegasus Carpets. The perfect combination of durability and affordability, this is a popular choice with our customers. Offering excellent fade resistance and a range of timeless colours, it delivers enduring style and performance for an amazing price! Top tip on carpet – we always encourage an underlay upgrade. For just a little bit extra, this is a great way to extend the life of your carpet and create an even softer feel underfoot. Spending this additional small amount is something our customers never regret!
The Mt Hobson range from Pegasus Carpets is stain resistant, durable and stylish offering amazing value for money and bang for buck!
Now on to hard flooring, a product that continues to prove itself time and time again is the Kenzie range of vinyl planks from Signature Floors. Even though Kenzie has an entry level price point, it offers excellent durability and wear, as well as a stunning selection of timeless natural designs. It really does tick all of the boxes for first home flooring! Another fantastic hard flooring option is the recently released Oslo vinyl range from Robert Malcolm which features some stunning vinyl tiles. These clever vinyl tiles allow you to have the high end look of tiles at a fraction of the cost and offer some unique styles and patterns too for those after something different.
Kenzie vinyl planks (above left) from Signature Floors and Oslo vinyl tiles (above right) from Robert Malcolm are both excellent hard flooring options for a first home, ticking the boxes for quality, style and budget.
Often forgotten, another floor covering that is important to consider is garage carpet. Much like an underlay upgrade, garage carpet doesn’t cost much at all but immediately adds value by making your garage a more usable and practical space. We always encourage our customers to have garage carpet installed as it provides many benefits for minimal cost and they are never disappointed in choosing to do so.
Often forgotten about and overlooked, garage carpet is worth doing, for minimal cost you get a far more usable and functional space.
There are some great flooring choices for your first home that combine quality, style and budget, in both carpet and hard flooring. If you’re feeling unsure about which product to choose, or even which colour, or perhaps you just want to see and touch them in real life, pop in and see us! Our friendly team are here to help, answer your questions and guide you in your flooring journey, whether that is for your first home or dream home. We’d love to talk all things flooring with you!