Most of us wish we could be better at keeping our homes clean, but even the best of us can’t keep everything spotless 100% of the time. Life happens, dirt, dust, hair, and crumbs happen. Pets and kids are certainly a leading cause of messes, but even petless empty nesters kick up dust. The average person doesn’t spend their lives vacuuming and mopping multiple times a day. How can we hide the everyday dust, hair, dirt, and crumbs on the days in between deep cleans?

It turns out that your flooring’s style may be your secret weapon. The colour, pattern, or even texture can work as an invisibility cloak for your floors. Take a look at how these types of flooring can help hide everyday messes.

Light/Bright Flooring

When a customer is debating between a light and dark floor, we like to remind them of black vehicles. When they are fresh from the carwash, they are gorgeous, but as soon as you drive them off the lot, you can see every speck of dust from the road. It’s the same with hard surface flooring. A gleaming chestnut floor is beautiful, but you can see every bit of dust that falls, every piece of dried mud, and every footprint. A lighter-coloured floor allows light grey dust to settle on the surface of your floors, unseen. Mud tends to dry lighter, so while the initial footprint may be hidden by a darker floor, as soon as it dries, it will be very obvious. Generally, light floors do a great job of hiding messes until you can sweep up again.

Flooring with Natural Patterns

Choosing a flooring that has a natural pattern is another really great way to hide potential messes. Whether you are choosing a tile that looks like stone or a laminate that imitates hardwood, these natural shadows, dips, and highlights will hide dirt and other messes. Many tiles, vinyl or ceramic, will have different colours mixed throughout to better match a real stone, especially with tiles like mesa stone or travertine. The same can be said about wood-look flooring. The best wood-look flooring imitates real wood closely, and this helps to hide everyday mess. If we are looking at a truly natural wood floor, it will have shade variation between planks, as well as knots, scraping, and maybe even sealed holes from the age of the wood. Naturally occurring imperfections (even imitated ones) are great for hiding bits of dirt that may get missed by a broom. The idea is that if the floor already has imperfections, your imperfect cleaning shouldn’t show.

Matte Flooring

Matte flooring, whether it be matte tile, low-gloss vinyl or laminate, hides dust much better than a glossy floor. A shiny floor will catch and reflect light, therefore highlighting anything on the floor. Plus, glossy flooring will show scuffs, spills, or sticky spots more than any matte finish ever will. Think about how fingerprints will show much more obviously on a window with unfrosted glass vs frosted glass. The same sort of thing occurs with your flooring. Choosing a flooring with a matte or natural finish could save you the headache of living with seemingly grubby floors.

Flooring Featuring Multiple Colours

Our biggest tip for active households, or any household, really, is to install a carpet with a little fleck of colour throughout it. I’m not suggesting that you should get a white carpet with pink mixed in there, though that would be cool. What I mean is that you should choose a carpet with a similar colour flecked through it. For instance, we carry many light brown carpets with a slightly darker brown fleck in them, or creams and greys mixed together. This helps to camouflage any dirt or hair that may land on your carpet. This trick is not exclusive to carpet either, you can find many hard surface floors that have multiple colours and shades in one piece. This is especially true for rustic stone and wood patterns, where you can rely on knots, highlights, and natural stone blends. The more colours in a floor, the more colours of mess can be hidden.

Flooring That Matches Your Lifestyle

This tip is probably the sneakiest way to hide everyday mess on your floors. If you know that there is a certain SOMETHING that is on your floors more often than not, install flooring that matches that. If you’ve heard us asking what colour your pet is, this is why. If you can, try to match your floors to the colour of your pet’s fur. If you know that the mud regularly tracked in is more clay than sand, install something with a red hue to it. If you’ve got a woodstove or fireplace, consider going with a hard surface floor that matches ashes and dust. And as much as we are embarrassed by it, many people with long hair shed. I know, we don’t want to admit it, but it’s true. So, much like matching our flooring to our pet’s wayward fur, we can match our flooring to our hair. If you have beautiful, dark chestnut hair (and lose strands as much as I do), it may be a good idea to stay away from pale blonde flooring. Choosing the right colour of flooring can prevent frustration and help us feel more comfortable in our homes.

All in all, don’t neglect your cleaning, but don’t stress about perfection. Sometimes, the perfect way to keep things clean is to install the right flooring and give yourself a leg up on the mess. Hopefully, these tips will help you to know what to install to keep “what’s under your feet” tidy. Visit us in the store for more tips and to see some of these samples in person.