Choosing the floor for your apartment is not the same as deciding on flooring for your own home. The flooring for an apartment is a particularly intimate surface. It is the first thing your bare feet step onto in the morning and the last thing they touch before climbing into bed each night. You want it to be comfortable for bare feet, attractive, durable, easy to maintain, and clean. Apartments can be challenging to maintain, and wear and tear should be a primary consideration when you’re choosing what type of floor to put in your apartment.
Popular options include hardwood, Vinyl or linoleum, and ceramic or stone tile.
Hardwood flooring is the most popular choice for apartment floors. Among real estate professionals, genuine hardwood is usually regarded as one of the best materials. Not only is it beautiful and hard-wearing, but it’s relatively durable. Even better, it biodegrades and is considered an environmentally friendlier surface. There are dozens of types of hardwood used for floors, some of the most popular are ash, walnut, oak, and maple. Strip, plank, and parquet are the three most common wood flooring styles. For apartment flooring strip and plank are by far the most popular. Both are traditional, linear pieces of wood, but the plank is wider than the strip, giving it a more casual vibe.
Whether it is sheet vinyl, vinyl tiles, or newer luxury vinyl flooring (LVF) tongue-and-groove planks, vinyl is a surprisingly versatile choice for apartments. Vinyl has luxury vibes. Although it is not as soft as carpeting, it’s not as hard as hardwood or tile, and breaks fall better. Linoleum is slightly more expensive than most types of floors, and design choices may be more limited. Still, it is worth looking into if you are considering a resilient flooring material that is 100% biodegradable.
Ceramic tile and stone are rarely used for apartments since they are usually considered too cold, hard, and noisy. Still, ceramic or porcelain tile or stone works beautifully when incorporated with certain decorating styles, notably Mediterranean, Tuscan, tropical, Spanish, or Moroccan themes.
