Interior designers when creating a space, look at the line, form, shape, space, light, colour, pattern and texture. As you can see, flooring solutions would be an important part of ensuring the eight guiding principles of interior design are complete within a space. But which flooring is best?
When it comes to choosing a flooring material, there are dozens of options. Wall-to-wall carpets, wooden floors, tiles, linoleum, etc. There may be other flooring solutions you have not thought of, and reinforced concrete floors are probably one of them.
Concrete floors? Really?!
We are accustomed to seeing concrete as a rough-to-the-touch material, grey, dusty, bland and boring. It is, after all, a structural material in many a modern building, forming vast pillars and the supporting platform on which flooring is built.
It is not a material that is associated by many as a top layer of flooring. But you are in for a surprise because concrete flooring can be buffed and polished, stained and patterned to create beautiful flooring solutions.
And this is why concrete flooring is important in the interior design of your home;
Can make a space feel bigger or smaller
You have a vast expanse of space, but it may be that. Actually, you want to close it down a little to stop it feeling so cavernous.
Using a finish on the floor, as well as walls and ceiling can help with this. And concrete flooring can help in other ways too;
- Opt for a patterned finish that has lines on the diagonal across the floor – the prevents the space from feeling too big and vast.
- Emphasis a direction of travel – if space is narrow, opt for a linear pattern that is horizontal or, in a space that is wide, a vertical stripe can help to lead the eye in the direction that you want it to.
- Large patterns work well in larger spaces, and smaller patterns work well in smaller spaces or rooms. In a larger bathroom, opt for larger tiles but in a smaller bathroom, a mosaic tile finish on the floor, a pattern easily embedded in a concrete floor, looks fantastic.
- Don’t clutter the space with too much texture on the floor, others the interior design can look too lumpy or cut in half.
- You can also different concrete patterns, colours and finishes to zone a room – this work well in a larger, open plan living space where you may want to create a different feel in the kitchen and dining areas as you do to the rest of the space
Allows light to play
Natural light in any space, in any home, is important. In interior design, you want to maximize the light in a room, and it is the colour that is your main tool for doing so.
The colour of the flooring solution will have a big impact on the light in space, and how it is used. A high gloss finish on a floor surface is perfect for reflecting light around a space, but if you prefer a matte finish, then the colour is an important choice.
We often associate concrete with a pallid grey colour, but with staining and chemical treatment, there is a whole range of colours that can be created.
Better still, you can create unique, customized floor finishes with concrete flooring too, which really sets the interior of your home part from any other.
Practical Considerations
But let’s be honest, some of the interior design schemes we see in the glossy pages of magazines or splashed across the internet look fantastic but, you may think to yourself, they are simply not practical in your home.
Flooring solutions need to be practical for obvious reasons – they need to be hygienically clean, especially with feet, shoes and pet paws scrabbling about on them. With hard flooring solutions too, you have the added benefit of being able to wash allergens away, like dust mites and so on.
Better still, with reinforced concrete floors, even if they are finished to give the appearance of white marble in a busy family home, it will stay looking white, bright and glossy without the need for banning people from walking on it or spending hours with a scrubbing brush in hand.
Concrete floors can be customized to suit your home, your style, and your budget. Of all the flooring solutions open to you, concrete is possibly the most adaptable, the most long-lasting and the one that is probably most affordable too.
Midland Concrete Flooring provides reinforced concrete flooring solutions to domestic and commercial customers throughout the UK.
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