Kids are delightful, but they are also destructive. Any experienced parent will confirm both. Truth be told, it is actually kind of surprising just how much destructive energy can be wrapped up in one little tiny person. This becomes readily apparent in an area that gets easily overlooked – your floors.
Here are some things to keep in mind regarding your floors, especially if you have kids in the house.
What to Know About Flooring for Kids
Why It Is Important to Pay Attention to the Health of Your Floors
With a couple of notable exceptions, most flooring materials only achieve their maximum durability when you maintain them properly. This can be difficult when you have a dozen other things going on at once. But even if you have a particularly durable floor that would normally last for decades (think something sturdy like oak), letting a spill sit on the surface and work its way into the subflooring can cause massive amounts of long-term damage.
It’s summer time in Nashville right now, so be extra careful when doling out cups of water and juice to your little ones. Water and moisture in general are some of the biggest killers of floors.
Residential Carpeting – Literally and Metaphorically Soft
Let’s take a look at which flooring materials are not recommended for homes with kids. The top of this list is also probably one of the most common flooring options available on the market: residential carpeting.
If you are concerned about how the floors in your home look, do not install carpeting with kids around. It snags easily. It stains worse than just about any other type of flooring material out there since the fibers trap dirt or food particles, as well as allergens. You have to move very quickly to clean up spills. Yes, it is soft, making it ideal for smaller children since you do not have to worry about them bonking their heads on the hard ground, but there are other ways to protect them without all the hassle of carpet. Additionally, residential carpeting take the most amount of time to clean and maintain.
Other floors that are not recommended for homes with kids include other soft flooring options such as cork and bamboo flooring.
Is Anything Kid-Proof?
So what does that leave? Well, at the top of the list is the MVP of the flooring world: vinyl plank flooring.
Vinyl flooring has come a long way since the 70s and is found in many homes across the world. For one thing, it handles all kinds of damage better than just about every other kind of flooring. Vinyl floors are engineered to be waterproof. They are also softer than hardwood flooring, giving you less injury worries. It can also be styled to fit just about any design vision you have. Even if your heart is set on a hardwood floor, you can find the equivalent pattern, just in a safer alternative.
Kids are great, but finding the right environment to minimize household destruction is key. Stay away from carpets and head toward vinyl plank flooring. And if you have any flooring questions at all, be sure to give Ozburn-Hessey a call.
