With many of us having little critters running about the place, there become more things we need to consider when decorating and designing our homes for them. An obvious one being we do not want to spend a mad amount of money on expensive sofas or rugs for our pets to then scratch them, we have to make sacrifices! A good place to start is your flooring, being expensive and disruptive to change and takes a lot of abuse! However some flooring options are much more suitable than others, so what is the best flooring for your home if you have pets?
Solid or engineered wood flooring
A solid choice! Pardon the pun. Wood flooring really has the wow factor and will look good for years to come even with heavy domestic abuse, often outliving the person who laid it! This makes it unbeatable in terms of longevity and will last a lifetime if cared for properly. Now all these features are great, but is it any good at withstanding pets roaming about the place? The answer is yes and no. Let’s start off positively first. As already mentioned, solid wood is very durable and will withstand lots of paw traffic without showing wear, which of course is important when we have pets. Secondly, it is scratch, stain and water resistant which again is very important with pets, as sometimes they do their business where they fancy and their claws can scratch! However, wood is only resistant to these so be careful. The good news is that you can sand down and refinish your wood floors a number of times to remove any damage, so even if your pets do damage the floors, you can start over with wood, which is not something you can do on any other flooring type.
Laminate and Luxury Vinyl Tiles
As luxurious and desirable wood flooring is, we would say that laminate and luxury vinyl tiles are the best when it comes to flooring for pets. Laminate is scratch, stain and water resistant where as LVT is full proof against these, which as you can imagine is perfect for your pets and your own mind. As well as this, they are also much more affordable than wood flooring and doesn’t need cleaning too frequently to keep it looking hygienic, minimum once or twice a week! We know how it can be hard to get round to cleaning when you have pets, so rest assured that these two flooring types will ease this burden.
