A lot of the time, when people hear “interior design” their mind wonders to that cute vase they saw on their way from work or a beautiful painting that would look just great in their living room.
However, a truly amazing interior design starts much earlier – with your choice of walls and flooring.
If you think your home needs some major renovations, but you aren’t sure where to start, it might be a good idea to consider the key reasons why proper walls and floors are so important for a great final look.
1. Maintenance
There are two main factors to consider when it comes to wall and floor maintenance in your home.
As the design team at www.msisurfaces.com/ has simply stated – you want to use durable easy-care materials in order to ensure your home shines decades from now just as it will the day the installations are complete.
The surfaces themselves need to be relatively smooth in order to make cleaning less of a hassle. Of course, some texture is fine – even desirable, but making it overly bumpy just means you’ll need to spend that much more time cleaning the surfaces.
Besides that, you don’t want a floor that will show signs of wear and tear the first time you drop something a bit heavier than your cellphone there.
When you choose the right walls and flooring for your home, you’re making sure that the home will look great for years to come with minimal upkeep.
2. Architectural Interest
Usually, when people do consider walls and floors, they mostly focus on things such as what color will look best with their sofa and how matching the floors to the walls will make the room look like it is one unified piece.
However, you also want to ensure that your choice of walls and flooring adds a subtle architectural interest as well.
This simply means that choosing a wall and floor material with at least a little bit of depth, pattern, or detailing adds some interest to the room and can add a bit of character.
Of course, you don’t want to go overboard with this and make your home too busy – but adding just a hint of depth in the walls and flooring will help set the tone for the rest of your decorating choices.
You can do this by installing hardwood floors that celebrate the natural beauty of the wood itself, or accenting your walls with a herringbone pattern to give it a stylish look.
While there’s also a time and place for loud patterns – for example in the kitchen and the bathroom, since it’s unlikely that you’ll make drastic changes there again anytime soon, you want the rest of your walls and flooring choices to add some interest while providing a nice backdrop for the rest of the decorating choices you will make – and potentially change up in a few years.
3. The Perfect Canvas
A lot of planning goes into making a home look great, but one part of the process that people often forget about is how to make sure your choice of walls and floors will support the overall story you are telling with your decor.
You want them to be like a well-primed canvas for the rest of your design. Something that will make the furniture and decor elements pop in just the right way.
You have to think about what style you’re going for and then find something that matches – this isn’t just about colors, it’s also about the style of the pattern and even texture.
Again, you don’t want to go too far with this – if everything is overly stylized or textured, it could end up looking like a mess.
But having one focal point per room that ties everything together can really help your home stand out as a cohesive piece of art that was carefully crafted over time.
4. Light
Finally, you want to ensure that the choices you make in this regard are in sync with the natural and artificial light your home can offer.
You can’t choose paint colors or flooring materials without considering the lighting in the room. This is because you want to make sure that whatever paints, flooring surfaces, and accent walls you select will work well with the lighting in the room.
If you live in an area that’s mostly bright and sunny, and your home has a lot of natural light coming in during the day, your choices are pretty much limitless.
However, if your home is on the darker side, you may want to show some restraint when it comes to dark heavy walls or flooring.
More precisely, you want to choose one or the other. This is because when your walls and flooring are too dark, they’ll absorb the light from the windows and make your home look duller.
While it’s not impossible to create something magical with this as well, it will severely limit the rest of your design choices in order to achieve a truly amazing look.
Choosing the proper walls and floors is an important step in your design process. It’s a great background for all of your other decorating choices – it’s the perfect canvas for everything you’re going to do with paints or furniture.
You want these surfaces to add personality but not overwhelm the rest of your home. And finally, you want to make sure that your choices mesh well with the lighting in your home – either natural or artificial – because you don’t want them to draw light away from other elements and steal the show!