Home Ideas

What’s under your feet (or however you get around) is as important as anything when it comes to home. That’s why this fall, we collaborated with The Home Depot on an A to Z guide that’ll give you the confidence to make flooring choices you’ll love. Check out the A to Z handbook here.

When you think of or are a designing a house fit for kids, the likes of playrooms, backyards and dens come to mind. But one of the most critical ways to make children feel comfortable in their space — from the time they are an infant to when a closed-door policy becomes the norm —is the look of the flooring. (Really!)
The Home Depot has decades of experience lending families a hand to outfit houses that becomes homes. When your own brood expands, here’s what to consider when it comes to flooring that’ll age well for everyone.

Give them a soft place to land

Pure – Color Butternut Pattern 12 ft. Carpet
Lifeproof homedepot.com
$39.51

The physical nature of child’s play — from roughhousing with a sibling to practicing cheerleading jumps indoors — often means young ones spend an extraordinary amount of time in close contact with the floor. Since bare elbows and knees appreciate a soft landing, it’s no wonder that wall-to-wall carpet is a top choice for their areas.
In addition to being far more appealing to crawl around on than, say, laminate, carpet is great for insulation and sound absorption. This means that if your budding diva loves to belt out movie theme songs 40 times a day, you’re less likely to hear it in other parts of the house, or if your toddler jumps for joy (over and over) every time their favorite show comes on, the thuds won’t be quite as noticeable.
Recent developments in carpet technology have also cut down on the previous drawbacks of putting carpet in a kid’s room — most notably, in the spills and messes category.

Opting for carpet that combats pills, messes, and stains is one way to keep things clean when there are kids at home.

Stain-resistant carpet does exactly what it promises in repelling spots and discoloration. Innovations like SoilSheild technology stands up against not only juice box disasters, but everyday dirt and grime that can potentially cause allergies to flare up.
Carpet tiles are another good option for kid-friendly spaces, thanks in particular to being easy to replace. (For more information on carpet and carpet tiles, check out letter C.)

Pair hard surfaces with a soft layer
If your home has hard flooring, like luxury vinyl, hardwood and laminate, an easy fix is to lay down something plush: an area rug (more on that under letter A). Using area rugs also allows for changes over time as preferences shift. You can definitely swap out a powder-pink high-pile rug for a black-and-white swirled one as whims morph — a whole lot easier than tearing out carpet that’s highly-specific to the interests of a five-year-old. (Hello, dinosaurs!)

Interlocking foam or rubber tiles, like those used for home gyms, are also a simple way to keep knees from getting banged up without a permanent change. Adding interlocking foam tiles over other flooring — like hardwood — works especially well if you’re thinking about selling your home in the future and won’t want to replace existing kid-approved flooring with something new to increase curb appeal.

Cork is durable and eases transitions

Burnished Straw Plank Cork 13/32 in. Thick x 5-1/2 in. Width x 36 in. Length Cork Flooring (10.92 sq. ft. / case)
Heritage Mill homedepot.com
$43.46

If you aren’t interested in carpet but still want a softer, full-coverage option, cork is cushiony and resilient but still looks cool. It comes in sheet or tile form, and is also ultra stain-resistant when installed and sealed correctly.

The anti-microbial and anti-static properties of cork work to keep a room as naturally dust-free as possible, and the material can easily smooth the transition from playful kids to teens with overflowing laundry hampers: no complete flooring redesign necessary. More

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What’s under your feet (or however you get around) is as important as anything when it comes to home. That’s why this fall, we collaborated with The Home Depot on an A to Z guide that’ll give you the confidence to make flooring choices you’ll love. Check out the A to Z handbook here.

Think of wall-to-wall carpet, and you’ll likely remember the orange shag your aunt had in her basement growing up; the florescent space-themed flooring of an old bowling alley; the impersonal grey carpet in your first rental apartment. It’s all a little dated.
Fortunately, carpet is making a comeback in a big way, and The Home Depot stocks it all, whether you are looking for a specific color, texture, or feel.
“In years past, carpet was always seen as this plain, neutral flooring underfoot,” says Carisha Swanson, Market Director for House Beautiful. “But if you actually think about why you like standalone rugs, more than likely it’s because it has a great pattern in it. You can also get that great pattern now in a wall-to-wall carpet.”
Let us change your mind about just how refined the material can look—no shag required.

Get your footing with terminology
You wanna talk carpet, the first thing to understand is pile. The pile of a carpet—another word for the height of the carpet fibers—are typically categorized as either low, medium, or high.

Home Decorators Collection Gemini II-Color Artisan Hue Textured 12 ft. Carpet
Home Depot
$22.41

Low-pile carpet has short, dense fibers, which makes it difficult for dirt to get trapped, and is ideal for high-traffic spaces that might require frequent cleaning, like a living room, playroom or entryway.
Often a popular choice for bedrooms, medium-pile carpet has slightly taller, less dense fibers, adding to under-foot comfort while maintaining a relative ease-of-cleaning factor.
And then there’s high-pile carpet—the most lavish, with tall, loose fibers—that works best for less busy parts of the house, or for a smaller space that’s aching for a little bit of luxury.
Next up: choose the carpet construction that’s right for you, which will generally fall into the categories of cut pile or loop pile.

Cut pile refers to carpet where loops of yarn have been cut or shorn after being attached to the backing. The result is soft, and its fibers move more freely, which creates an underfoot experience perfect for a bedroom or family room where you’ll often hang out, sans socks and shoes. Within this category, you’ll find cut pile carpet types like “plush” (extremely soft, but shows footprints), “twist” (in which the yarn pieces are twisted for greater resiliency—currently extremely popular) and “frieze” (in which longer piles are twisted tightly several times so that they create a dense texture—soft and comfortable, but can be hard to clean).
Loop pile carpet, on the other hand, means that a carpet’s yarn loops are not cut after being attached to the backing, making it generally less gentle on feet and better suited to a heavily-trod area like an entryway or staircase. Level loop refers to when the loops are all one height, and “pattern” carpet means the loops form intricate patterns within the carpet’s design. One of the most common loop pile carpets is Berber carpet (which Swanson recommends), a style often made out of nylon and based on the traditional handwoven carpets of Berber peoples in North Africa.

Carpet according to room use

As with most flooring, using your space as a guide to dictate your carpet-of-choice can ensure that you’ll find just the right combination of pile height and construction to meet your needs.

LifeProof Evocative Color Silence Pattern 12 ft. Carpet
Home Depot
$44.00

For example, carpet works well for creating cozy warmth for a child’s playroom—but that isn’t the place for a plush, all-white carpet that’s just asking for a slice of pizza land on it.
For busier spaces that require durability, go with something lower pile that’s built for rough-and-tumble energy, like Lifeproof carpet that has a lifetime warranty against stains and a 25 year warranty against wear. For a more elegant, natural look, explore a higher-pile, yarn-dyed carpet (where the fibers are dyed before being attached to the backing) that will set the mood and provide a touch of low-key sophistication, like many of the options from the Home Decorators Collection.
“Some people think that when they’re making an investment in wall-to-wall carpet that it’s something that they can’t ever change out,” says Swanson. “But if you’re making an investment in a really good area rug, you’re not going to change that either, and wall-to-wall prevents any awkward layouts within a space or rug slippage.”

Leave installation to the professionals
After you’ve landed on the dream carpet for your space, next comes installation. General contractor Mark Clements of My FixItUp Life recommends calling a professional, a far safer bet than trying to measure, cut, and stretch the carpet on your own. “It’s the kind of thing where you’ll say to yourself, ‘Why am I doing this myself, exactly?’” he says, noting that a person tackling the project themselves would have to rent, among other things, a carpet stretcher and install tack stripping—the strips along the edges of a room into which carpet is tacked—to ensure the carpet doesn’t wrinkle.

He does, however, recommend taking up the old carpet on your own, which will save money in the long run. “The trick there is to cut it up into manageable squares—I usually recommend two by three. You use a sharp knife, you cut it into squares, stack them up and carry them out.”

Foss Peel and Stick Hobnail Gunmetal Texture 18 in. x 18 in. Residential Carpet Tile (16 Tiles/Case)
Home Depot
$42.99

Clements also suggests exploring carpet tiles to create the wall-to-wall carpet look with a little bit more flexibility—and if you want to try your hand at a DIY installation. “Carpet tiles are very easy to deal with, they’re beautiful and long-lasting,” Clements says. “Some are solid, some have really cool patterns in them, and you can create any designer pattern you want. They’re easy to cut, to carry, to transport. If one gets stained, you just peel it up and stick down another one.”

And whether your carpeted room becomes the snuggle-on-the-floor, well-loved center of your children’s life, or the high-end bedroom oasis of your dreams, one thing’s for sure: this isn’t your grandma’s carpet. More

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What’s under your feet (or however you get around) is as important as anything when it comes to home. That’s why this fall, we collaborated with The Home Depot on an A to Z guide that’ll give you the confidence to make flooring choices you’ll love. Check out the A to Z handbook here.

While its likely not the first detail you think of when embarking on a flooring project, molding—whether for walls, floors, windows, or doors—helps a room become the most polished version of itself. Shoe molding and baseboard, two types of molding, secure the perimeter of a room and help create a clean, finished look between the floor and walls.

But there are a dizzying number of options that can cause choice paralysis if you’re not careful. So here’s a quick guide all about the role molding plays when it comes to flooring, and how to select a style that’s right for you from the collection at The Home Depot. Read up now, and you’re less likely to be stuck fretting over these final steps when the time comes.

Shoe molding: Mind the “expansion gap”

Shoe molding is the simplest (and most foundational) base molding type out there. It acts as a seam between flooring and a wall and covers the all-important “expansion gap”: a small vertical space which allows for the floor to inhale and exhale — relatively speaking — without buckling up against the wall and damaging itself. (For more information on hardwood floors, see letter H!)

WM129 7/16 in. x 11/16 in x 96 in. Base Shoe Moulding
Finished Elegance homedepot.com
$4.54

Also called “base shoe” because of its position at (you guessed it!) shoe level, this functional and flexible wood trim is found in most rooms with a hard flooring surface, whether that’s laminate, hardwood, tile, or luxury vinyl.

In addition to filling in the expansion gap and providing a buffer for any furniture that might bump up into the walls, shoe molding fills in the spaces where baseboard and floor don’t quite match up. (And since baseboards can be fairly ornate and sometimes lack straight lines on the bottom, this happens more often than you might think.)
Shoe molding, which is usually nailed into a baseboard using finishing nails and never into the wall, comes in a wide range of styles, shapes, and sizes. The style that works best for you depends on your home’s overall design aesthetic. Plain and simple quarter-round base shoe (named because it looks like a quarter cut of a dowel rod) will get the job done, but more ornate forms of pre-cut shoe molding are sleeker, and can range from arts-and-crafts-style to colonial and beyond. Most importantly, base shoe is taller than it is wide which ensures it doesn’t jut out into the room too far while still filling the expansion gap. On average, it clocks in at about ¾” to 1” in height and ½” in width.

The molding style that works best in your home depends on the overall design aesthetic.

Molding material also plays a big part in the overall finished look of a room. Molding that’s made from medium-density fiberboard (MDF) is an inexpensive solid-wood alternative that comes primed, but should be painted (and not stained) to give your space a complete look. It’s extra flexible, so if there are uneven spots on your baseboard, or even the flooring itself, it could be a smart choice.
Solid wood molding typically comes in two camps: pine (a softwood), which is relatively inexpensive and can be stained or painted, and hardwood (ash, oak, or walnut are common choices), which can also be stained or painted. If you’re feeling funky, try an unexpected finish, like painting the trim to match the walls instead of painting it traditional white, or stain it to match the floors.
But whatever you choose, don’t forget to paint or stain your shoe molding (and trim of any kind) prior to installing it.

Baseboards: They bring the drama

If shoe molding is the subtle element, quietly adding a protective finishing touch to your space, baseboards are the attention-grabbers that can completely change the feel of a room. Baseboard serves a similar purpose to shoe molding (tying together the floor-meets-wall area), but it is much taller and often more decorative. Often working in tandem with shoe molding (but occasionally standing alone), baseboards not only can add character to a room but help tie it to the design identity of other parts of the house.

5523 29/64 in. x 3-1/4 in. x 8 ft. PVC Composite White Colonial Base Moulding
Royal Building Products homedepot.com
$8.57

LWM 163E 9/16 in. x 5-1/4 in. Solid Pine Base Moulding
Woodgrain Millwork homedepot.com
$2.64

Timeless Craftsman 55E1 5-1/2 in. x 11/16 in. x 96 in. Primed MDF Base Moulding
Woodgrain Millwork homedepot.com
$11.27

WM 631 9/16 in. x 3-1/4 in. x 96 in. Primed Finger-Jointed Base Moulding
Woodgrain Millwork homedepot.com
$13.11

The most important factor to take into consideration with your baseboards is how they will feel in conjunction with other elements of the space. For example, if you have high ceilings in an older home and want to match that grandiose feel, go for an equally tall baseboard with a colonial design. Do you live in a more modern space? Flat baseboards are all the rage, adding a polished look without drawing too much attention. More

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What’s under your feet (or however you get around) is as important as anything when it comes to home. That’s why this fall, we collaborated with The Home Depot on an A to Z guide that’ll give you the confidence to make flooring choices you’ll love. Check out the A to Z handbook here.

Choosing the right flooring for your home means considering a laundry list of questions, from what kind of ambiance you’d like to how many shoes will be scuffling across it each day. When it gets down to decision-making time, though, the single biggest factor for most people is budget. Fortunately, there’s a material that’s accessible for almost everyone’s wallet: vinyl.
Vinyl might have a reputation for being cheap and flimsy, but this assumption belies the more modern versions on the market now. Today, vinyl is often manufactured to smartly mimic hardwood or tile, and is made up of a central core, a printed photo of the material it’s imitating, like distressed wood or ultra-sleek teak, and a clear, protective “wear layer” finish.
The Layers of Luxury Vinyl Flooring

The options for different looks are pretty much limitless — for example, The Home Depot stocks almost 1,000 options for vinyl planks — and on average costs much less than the flooring it’s emulating, between $2 to $5 per square foot. (In comparison, hardwood can go for upwards of $10 per square foot.)

Today, vinyl often means luxury vinyl

Hockley Oak 8.7 in. W x 47.64 in. L Luxury Vinyl Plank Flooring (20.06 sq. ft./Case)
LifeProof homedepot.com
$63.98

When people talk about contemporary vinyl flooring, they’re likely referring to luxury vinyl (LV) flooring, which is made in plank form or tile form — not the rolled out sheets of the past — and is a serious step up over former iterations of the material.
Vinyl planks can vary in thickness, from approximately 2 millimeters to 8 millimeters, and denser planks will be your best bet in busier areas of the home, like hallways and living rooms, due to greater stability.
If you’re searching for vinyl flooring that can really hang tough against wear, a high-quality version of vinyl planks known as engineered vinyl planks (EVPs) are created with a “rigid core” system that makes them extra sturdy even when faced with the rowdiest situations. (They’re also completely waterproof, unlike some vinyl, which is only water resistant.) Whatever density of vinyl you select, the material is well-loved for its springiness and warmth, which is welcoming underfoot.

It’s a DIY-friendly material

Carrara Marble 12 in. x 24 in. Peel and Stick Vinyl Tile (20 sq. ft. / case)
TrafficMASTER homedepot.com
$22.40

If simple installation is what you’re after, you can’t get much easier than vinyl. Some brands use the “floating floor” technology that’s also common with laminate, in which planks simply click and lock together atop pretty much any previously existing surface without the need for nails or glue.
Others use a self-adhesive material that can be applied directly to a subfloor in a method that’s as painless as applying a giant, super-strong flooring sticker. With vinyl tiles, there’s even groutable versions to further enhance their look-a-like nature.

Clean-up is less of a chore
Thanks to the wear layer on top (which can last upwards of 10 years with proper care), simply sweeping and mopping on a regular basis will keep your floors looking tip-top, no scrubbing required. In fact, using too much elbow grease is pretty much the only way to harm your vinyl floors, so stay away from any harsh chemicals, rough scouring pads or steam cleaning.
Because of its easy-cleaning nature, spills and messes are less of a worry with vinyl than with other flooring types, making it a strong choice for spaces like playrooms, where fingerpainting is common, or kitchens, where pizza slices might go splat. Basements and bathrooms, which can sometimes be challenging places to apply new flooring due to moisture levels, are also primo spots for vinyl due to the fact that it’s less likely to warp under even the most humid conditions.

Vinyl is a go-to for rooms in the home that are prone to higher moisture levels, like bathrooms and basements.

Be mindful of the flip side
Of course, there are other aspects of vinyl to take into consideration before you choose it. Vinyl isn’t biodegradable, so if you’re looking to create a more sustainable home environment, it would be better to go with a different material, like cork or bamboo. While most versions will stand up against the scuffs and scrapes of day-to-day life, it can still be dented, particularly through moving heavy objects like furniture. And it won’t necessarily add long-term value to your home like actual hardwood or tile, so if you’re planning on selling or moving soon, don’t expect to make back your investment.
But if you’re in your home for the long haul and are looking for an inexpensive, easy-to-install way to update the look of your space? Vinyl just might be the answer. More

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