Hardwood flooring has an exquisite and classy appearance. When installed in the living room, the flooring becomes the focal point of Dssathe house. Though hardwood flooring is excellent for all indoor areas, it is one of the best for the living room flooring. Not only the beauty of hardwood flooring, but its durability is also a perk to choose for the living room.
But before you select hardwood flooring for the living room, you should know all about hardwood flooring. Learning the available options and knowing how to select the right hardwood is important to make an informed decision. So if you are looking for some ideas on the matter, I am here to help you.
From years of experience and research, I have gradually learned about hardwood flooring ideas. In this article, I intend to share my takeaways with you so that you choose the right one to adorn your living room.
Are you ready to learn?
5 Hardwood Flooring Textures For Living Room: Choose A Style:
Textures of hardwood flooring decide the look of the hardwood flooring. Different textures of hardwood flooring create different vibes. While one texture can give a modern house environment, the other texture may give the warmth of a countryside house.
Basically, the hardwood flooring texture is the type of polishing it had and which wood has been used. These two factors change the look of the flooring by altering the texture. So before you know the other factors, you should learn about the 5 popular hardwood flooring textures:
1. Wire Brushed Texture:
In wire brushed hardwood, you see the hardwood of the wooden planks. The process uses a hand-bristled brush to polish the wood surface. This texture is generally created on oak and hickory woods giving a smooth matte look.
The wire brushed textured flooring has a dark tone with a consistent flow across the planks. You can see the thin lines on the wood as if someone has brushed over it. With a few wormholes, and consistent streaks throughout the flooring, wire brushed texture gives a calming and simple look. For traditional homes, this is a good option for living room flooring.
2. Hand Scraped Texture:
Hand scraped hardwood flooring has a raw texture with random streaks and knots all along the planks. This has a slightly distressed touch. It happens as the polishing is done with a hand scraper, flat chisels, and soft knives. Thus it has quite a rustic and antique appearance.
For traditional and countryside home living rooms, this is a good option. Though the look is antique, it blends fine with classic houses. Besides, if you want a low maintenance hardwood flooring option, this is the best you can get. Scratches, dirt, and scuff marks remain unnoticeable on hand scraped texture. Note that this texture can be done on a number of woods like oak, pine, walnut, etc.
3. Distressed Texture:
The distressed texture is seldom used for living room flooring. But it is still popular in farmhouse and countryside homes due to its raw and unpolished look. This is because distressed wood has the original look of raw wood.
As the name says, this has a distressed look made by chiseling and hammering. With random streaks, knots, scrapes, and grains, it replicates the look of raw wood. Suitable for old and vintage interiors, distressed hardwood flooring is easy to maintain.
4. Beveled Texture:
Beveled woods have edges with a slope creating a prominent grout lining. If I talk about the look, it has a soft and warm texture with consistent color and is patched throughout the flooring. Less chaos and more charm!
Beveled hardwood flooring is one of the best and classy choices for modern living rooms. With its solid and compact color and minimal grains, the beveled texture looks absolutely stunning, clean, and polished. It is vivid and bright! It makes your living room look spacious and cozy with its warm touch.
5. Smooth Sanded Texture:
With a faded color, the smooth sanded texture has a simple and calming tone. It is super smooth and flat with equal thickness and consistency all over the flooring. Unlike beveled flooring, the edges of this texture are flat and matched to each other.
The woods are polished with sandpapers to leave a slightly faded and smooth touch. With very minimal flaws, streaks, and grains, the smooth sanded texture looks almost plain. This is the highest level of polishing where the rough and raw texture of wood diminishes. Suitable for both modern and old houses, you can install this in living rooms with simple decors.
10 Hardwood Flooring Ideas For Living Room: Popular Designs:
A variety of hardwood flooring designs are available. Not only the wood species are different but the texture, color, and styles are versatile too. In fact, one wood can be polished in various ways to give different looks. This means hardwood flooring has a wide array of design variations. So before you choose, know the popular styles first.
You can use hardwood flooring in your basement, kitchen, bathroom and stairs. Anyway, here I mention the 10 popular hardwood flooring ideas for your living room. Your task is to choose the one that matches your living room interior:
1. Brushed White Oak:
Let’s start from the basics. The brushed white oak flooring is one of the most popular designs, especially in coastal areas. It gives a calming yet charming vibe with its light shade. The white shade with gray tints has a glossy look, suitable for living rooms in coastal areas. The brushed texture is another reason for its airy and light vibe.
Needless to say, it has a classy yet soothing look to offer.
2. Whitewashed Floor:
Whitewashed flooring is a matte version of brushed white oak. While the previous one was shiny and glossy, the whitewashed floor has a matte white shade. The gray tints are more prominent showing off an off-white shade. The streaks and patches are more visible giving a very fresh and classic look.
Suitable for modern living rooms, the whitewashed floor has a comfy and soothing look.
3. Acacia Hardwood Floor:
Acacia hardwood is an excellent and extraordinary option for your living room flooring. The shine and smoothness with scattered brown tones make it unique from all the other options. The tones are mixed with white, gray, and brown hues along with frequent knots and patches. It has a look beyond natural wood giving a polished and better version of it.
Acacia hardwood flooring for the living room is a favorite style in today’s time.
4. Warm Beige Hardwood:
Beige is a tone that has no hater! It is soft, serene, yet warm. Such a tone is always a good option for living room flooring. Warm beige hardwoods are extremely polished and nicely finished for giving off a light and shiny vibe. The color is light and subtle with minimal flaws on the planks.
If you want a neat and clean design, this is the option you should choose.
5. Warm White Oak:
White oak is a popular hardwood flooring option. With its warm light caramel brown tone, wide planks, and incessant color variation, white oak hardwood rocks on the living room floor. It makes the space roomy and has a warmth to offer. In most cold areas, this design is a popular one.
Choose warm white oak if you demand a cozy living room decor with a gentle color tone.
6. Barnwood Distressed Floor:
Do you love rustic and cozy living room decor with a fireplace? Then you would definitely admire the wide Barnwood planks for your living room. With random wormholes, streaks, deep grains, and knots, this has a very antique and raw look. The dark color combinations look bright and vivid. Another perk is that this flooring won’t look dirty or damaged easily as it is already distressed.
For a rustic and cozy look, install a Barnwood distressed floor in your living room.
7. Honey-tinted Hardwood:
A warm tone of honey on the living room home is the ultimate royal look you can get. Honey-tinted hardwoods have a creamy and silky texture with a subtle brown tone. The color tone is consistent with little knots and streaks to keep the creamy and smooth tone throughout the flooring.
For any modern and classic living room decor, honey-tinted hardwood is one of the favorite options. Its color is the most attractive part of this option.
8. Narrow Dark Hardwood Planks:
Chocolaty dark tones on narrow planks look amazingly classy and exotic in the living room flooring. If you love dark tones and want a proper modern look, you are going to go with this option. While narrow planks look sleek, the chocolaty tone improves the aesthetic of the room.
Popularly used in contemporary living rooms, narrow dark hardwood planks would look modern and sleek leaving your guests in awe.
9. Black Hardwood Plank:
Okay, so if you love something more intense and catchy, go for dark black hardwood flooring. This is very rarely used in living room decors. But if you can make a contrast between the walls and floors, you can use it excellently to decorate your living room. Be cautious about the styling if you choose this option. Keep the decor subtle to highlight the deep tone of black hardwood flooring.
Extremely attractive on modern houses, black hardwood plank is truly an exceptional option.
10. Painted Hardwood Floor:
If you need groovy and colorful living room flooring, simply paint it. Use white, light yellow, light pink, or even rustic red to paint the living room floor. Painted hardwood flooring has a very casual and funky look. It simply creates the mood of fun and light conversations.
So if you want to keep it simple but lively, paint the hardwood flooring with a color that matches the interior.
3 Factors To Consider While Choosing Hardwood Flooring For Living Room:
Knowing the options is the first part. But how are you going to choose the right hardwood flooring for your living room? To determine the right hardwood flooring option for your living room, you need to take care of three factors. Scrutinize these three factors to select the right one.
Here are the 3 factors to consider while choosing hardwood flooring for the living room:
1. Either Match Or Contrast The Color:
The color combination of the floor and the walls is the first factor to look into. Don’t choose a random hardwood flooring shade. You can either contrast the hardwood floor with the walls or match it completely to the walls.
A whitewashed floor with white walls would look good. Similarly, white walls with dark or black hardwood flooring would look good too. But a warm honey-tinted floor with yellow walls would look odd. So you should either think of a contrast tone or completely match the two.
2. Think Of The House Style:
If you have a modern house setup, go for the sleek and smooth hardwood flooring options. Polished and finished hardwood floors are the best for modern house living rooms. On the other hand, classic or traditional houses would require rustic and raw hardwood flooring.
Styling the hardwood flooring to the house interior is very important. The flooring should match the vibe of the house. Otherwise, the flooring would look mismatched and clumsy. So select the hardwood flooring that goes with the style of the house.
3. Decide On The Plank Width:
If you want sleek and modern living room flooring, the planks have to be narrow. But in case you want your living room to look spacious and classic, you should go for the wider planks.
Besides, narrow planks have more seams and joints than the other planks. So maintaining these planks is a bit tough. But the wider planks have fewer grout linings making cleaning easier. Therefore, choosing the right width of the plank is another part of the process.
Related Questions About Hardwood Flooring For Living Room:
Which Is The Popular Hardwood Flooring For Living Room?
A variety and species of hardwood are available in the market. Among all the options, oak hardwood is popularly used for living room flooring.
Though hickory and maple are better in terms of strength, oak is still the popular one. Both red and white oak wood have excellent aesthetic value. Polishing and finishing them can provide you with various color tones.
Oak planks are durable and can be shaped according to your requirement. Thus oak remained the most popular hardwood flooring option for living rooms.
Which Hardwood Flooring For Living Room Is Durable?
Durability and longevity are a concern while choosing the hardwood flooring for the living room. A variety of hardwoods are reliable candidates in this case.
Hickory, oak, and cherry are the most durable and reliable hardwood flooring options for living rooms. Not only in terms of durability, but these are also extremely exotic and pleasing in appearance. Despite these options, ebony and maple woods are commonly used for living room flooring. As living rooms are not too exposed to sunlight and moisture, all these options are durable on the living room floor.
What Is A Scratch-resistant Hardwood Flooring Living Room?
Scratches on hardwood flooring look extremely odd and bad. Especially in smooth woods, scratches become visible and destroy their beauty. Thus you may like scratch-resistant hardwood flooring in case you have pets and kids at home.
Though no wood is completely scratch-resistant, some woods are better than others. Hardwoods like white oak, maple, and hickory don’t make scratches visible much. They don’t get damaged or scratched easily.
On the other hand, cherry and pine are softer woods and get scratched easily. As hardwoods have random streaks and patterns, they adequately hide the minor damages keeping the look intact.
How do you choose the right wood species for your living room hardwood flooring?
The choice of wood species depends on your desired aesthetic, durability, and maintenance preferences. For a classic look, popular options like oak or maple offer versatility and durability. If you seek warmth and richness, cherry or walnut can be excellent choices. Exotic species like Brazilian cherry or teak offer unique grain patterns and colors. Consider the hardness of the wood species as well, as harder species are more resistant to dents and wear. Consulting with a flooring professional can help you select a wood species that best suits your living room needs.
What colors go best with hardwood floors in living room?
There are several color schemes that complement hardwood floors in the living room. Neutral colors, such as white, beige, or cream, create a timeless and elegant look. These colors allow the natural beauty of the hardwood to stand out and serve as a versatile backdrop for furniture and décor. Earthy tones, like warm browns or soft greens, can enhance the warmth of hardwood floors and create a cozy atmosphere. In addition, cool tones like blues or grays can provide a modern and sophisticated feel. Ultimately, choosing a color scheme that harmonizes with your personal style and the overall design of the room will help create a stunning living room.
Should hardwood flooring be lighter or darker than furniture?
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to the color of hardwood flooring in relation to furniture. It ultimately depends on your personal preference and the desired aesthetic of your living room. Some homeowners prefer a contrast between the flooring and furniture, opting for lighter hardwood flooring with darker furniture or vice versa. This contrast can create visual interest and depth in the room. On the other hand, choosing similar tones can create a harmonious and cohesive look. Consider factors such as the natural light in the room, the size of the space, and the overall color scheme to guide your decision-making process.
Which Hardwood Flooring Living Room Is On Trend?
Hardwood flooring never goes out of trend. But the styles change over time and new styles come up. In the current year, some hardwood flooring trends have become popular.
White oak is still the favorite wood species for hardwood flooring in the living room. Despite this, maple is also popular for living room hardwood flooring. In the current year, the trend of warm light-colored hardwood flooring for the living room has spiked.
Most people are installing wide planks with light brown tints and minimal flaws. You can look into this trend or browse other options too. But keeping an eye on the trend is always a good idea, isn’t it?
Which Direction Should Hardwood Flooring Living Room Be Laid?
The direction of the hardwood planks on the living room flooring is an important factor to notice. Installing the planks in the wrong direction is enough to destroy the look.
Ideally, you should install the hardwood planks across the longest wall of the room. I mean, the planks should be placed across the length of the room rather than the width of the room. This maintains the uniformity of the room and makes it look spacious and airy. So make sure that the direction of the planks is right.
Final Thoughts:
Hardwood flooring is a smart option for your living room only when you make an informed decision. As you have learned about the modern trends and available options, I believe you will be able to choose the right option.
So go ahead with hand picking the best hardwood flooring for your living room. Take assistance from the article and decide today!
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