Beautiful and Practical: Choose Flooring for Your Daily Routine

When it comes to renovating or updating rooms of your home, new flooring is often a number-one priority. Beautiful, modern floors have a huge impact on any space—and they can increase your home’s value to boot. So if you’re planning a flooring update soon, it’s important to choose a material that suits your style and lasts for many years to come.

The perfect flooring could mean many different things for different people, depending on your lifestyle, budget, family size and even climate. It also depends on the room itself and what it’s used for. Here’s our guide to the best flooring materials for achieving beautiful yet practical floors that suit your day-to-day life.

For High-Traffic Areas

Floors that get a lot of use need to be particularly durable so they can last for years and retain their original beauty. From entryways, mudrooms and hallways to the most-used room of your home (typically the kitchen), high-traffic spaces deserve floors capable of standing the test of time and resisting wear from shoes, spills and more. Porcelain tile is a popular recommendation for areas that see a lot of foot traffic, due to its durability and low maintenance needs.

For Kid-Friendly Homes

Whether or not you have children can be a big factor in choosing a practical floor material for your home. Some floor types are more kid-friendly than others, with concerns such as safety and durability that need to be considered.

Homeowners with kids—especially babies or toddlers—may want to avoid floors that are extremely hard and slippery to protect against falls and injury. But maintenance needs are also important to think about—after all, kids are messy and you don’t want cleaning the floor to be a hassle. A good solution is to install porcelain tile floors and simply use anti-slip socks and area rugs as needed. (Pro tip: machine-washable rugs are worth the investment!)

For Fido & Fluffy

If you own pets—dogs in particular—you probably have some of the same concerns as above. Paws tend to track mud, dirt or litter throughout the house, so an easy-to-clean floor is essential with pets. Combined with concerns about pet hair and allergens, carpet is not the best option for most pet owners. And if you have both kids and pets? Forget about it!

Tile flooring is easier to clean than carpet, more water- and scratch-resistant than hardwood and longer-lasting compared to vinyl or laminate floors.  A surface like Salem Grey Limestone will stand up well to your pet’s claws.

For Outdoor Living Spaces

If your family spends a lot of time outdoors and your patio is well-loved, it should be beautiful, safe and built to last. When it comes to outdoor flooring, it doesn’t get much better than porcelain tile with R11 Anti-Slip Finish, which is designed to reduce the slip potential on wet or dusty tile. Learn more with these tips and ideas for using porcelain tile outdoors. If you prefer natural stone, some types of travertine and honed marble are excellent outdoor flooring options as well.

See what your new floors can look like with the Just imagine Visualizer from Arizona Tile.