Find Your Perfect Floors

A guide to selecting the right floor for your home, lifestyle, and décor. Hardwood, vinyl, laminate, oh my!

Your flooring options are extensive, and it can be difficult to narrow down your choices to find what’s right for you and your home. But, with some simple guidance and a few go-to tips, you can approach floor shopping with the confidence and assurance you’ll need to end up with a flooring match made in heaven.

Here are some questions you might ask yourself as you prepare to select your floors.

Where are these floors going?

When it comes to flooring, the biggest differentiator is usually location. Geographically, drier environments are a better fit for the moisture sensitivities of hardwood, while wetter, more humid climates are better for more water-resistant options like vinyl, laminate, or tile.

And the same goes for inside of the home: rooms that experience more moisture—like bathrooms, mudrooms, and basements with concrete subfloors—might require a moisture-hardy vinyl or laminate, while bedrooms, living spaces, and kitchens are suited for virtually any option.

How much traffic can I expect?

If you have kids, pets, or unruly adults in the home, you should consider how much traffic your floors will experience. Hardwood floors are an excellent choice for beauty and performance but are more prone to scratches and dents than vinyl, laminate, or tile, and require regular upkeep to ensure maximum longevity.

A great option that can provide the elegance of hardwood with supreme waterproof durability is LL Flooring’s Duravana collection, a cutting-edge hybrid resilient flooring that’s waterproof, scratch-resistant, and easy to install.

What do I want the space to look like?

When it comes to interior design inspiration, we wholeheartedly believe in the power of a mood board. Before you make your flooring selections, browse design books, blogs, and design-centric social media accounts, collecting the images that jump out to you as you go.  Trust your gut, and save anything that sparks your interest—big or small.

Read: Beach Books + Blogs: A roundup of our favorite resources for home décor ideas

Once you start building a visual collection of inspirational rooms and ideas, step back and observe any common threads—from your collection of images, you’ll likely notice that you’re naturally drawn to particular shades or styles of flooring.

Even with these tips in-hand, the process of finding the perfect floors can seem daunting, but LL has great digital tools to help. The Floor Finder takes you through a quick quiz to offer up flooring inspiration based on your specific room, flooring type and styles. Another helpful tool is The Picture It! Floor Visualizer, where you can upload a room shot and then drop in LL’s flooring options to see how they will look in your space.

And of course, every LL Flooring location has in-store experts who can guide you through the selection process and find the right floors for your home.