Best Flooring Ideas for Your Living Room

Your living room is the heart of your home—hosting everything from family movie nights to cocktail parties, acting as a safe space for kids and pets to play, and the catch-all space for quality time with your loved ones. When choosing new living room floors, you want to find the perfect cozy style that elevates your design and offers long-lasting performance for your lifestyle. Depending on how often your living room is used and what you use it for, there’s a different type of flooring that’s right for you. Whether you aspire to a formal and elegant living area or anticipate a high-traffic, bustling communal space, there’s a type of flooring that will match your unique needs. Flooring America is here to share our best living room flooring ideas for a welcoming space.

Elegant & Durable Living Room Hardwood Flooring

Solid wood or engineered wood flooring is a popular choice for living rooms due to its ability to be dressed up or down depending on your furniture and decor. Not to mention it increases the value of your home and can last over a century with proper care! Hardwood floors are a classic choice for any room in your home but work especially well in living rooms. Many shades of hardwood will breathe life into your living room, and when combined with area rugs, they create an even cozier appeal. Consider different stains of solid wood to create a new look for your living room:

• Dark and cool-toned wood floors are popular because of their ability to complement both warm and cool colors. This makes it easy to switch up your living room decor as your taste evolves over the hardwood floor's lifespan.
• A more traditional option, blonde-colored wood can be installed in styles varying from distressed to glossy, depending on the look you’re going for. Honey and copper-toned wood floors bring a bright and cheery atmosphere to make all your guests feel welcome.

Cool-to-Touch Living Room Tile Flooring

If you want to capture a one-of-a-kind pattern, consider this natural flooring material. Tile is not only beautiful, but it also performs exceptionally well in high-humidity environments. Further, it helps to keep your home cool in warmer climates while reducing overall energy costs. If you need waterproof living room floors that are extremely durable, tile floors are the perfect solution. Additionally, tile boasts versatility in style with a range of colors, patterns, and finishes for understated or bold looks. Bring out your unique personality with tile flooring for your living room!

Oops Proof Luxury Vinyl Flooring Ideas

Luxury vinyl flooring is another sturdy option for the living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, and every room of your home. With its increasingly realistic design options, durability, and waterproof quality, vinyl holds up well in rooms that are prone to hefty use. If your dream living room consists of hardwood floors, but you’re worried about your kids spilling or your cat scratching, vinyl offers the best of both style and reliable strength. Whatever your design preferences, luxury vinyl plank (LVT) and luxury vinyl tile (LVP) flooring come in many colors and sizes to nail that cozy living room interior.

Low Maintenance Laminate Flooring

Laminate and vinyl flooring materials are often confused with one another, and rightfully so. They are both durable, stain and scratch-resistant, and come in a wide variety of designs that mimic more expensive hard surface flooring options. So how do you choose between them? Well, there are a few key differences to consider:

• Laminate flooring tends to be less expensive than vinyl flooring, ideal for saving money on a large living room flooring remodel.
• Laminate flooring is thicker and therefore quieter and softer to walk on.
• Vinyl flooring is fully waterproof, while laminate flooring is resistant to water.

So, if you’re a spill-prone household or in the midst of training a new puppy, you might want to choose vinyl. But if you’re a neat, pet-free household and you just want comfort and quiet, go for the laminate living room floor.

Soft and Cozy Carpet for Your Living Room

If you want to create a cozy space where you can curl up on the couch with a good book, take a long Sunday afternoon nap, and simply enjoy company, opt for carpet. Not only is carpet soft underfoot and insulating, but it also offers slip resistance and an excellent opportunity to transform your interior design. There are multiple different colors, patterns, textures, and pile heights to make your vision come to life.

If you want to achieve maximum comfort, a deep carpet pile offers a silky soft feeling. On the other hand, frequent entertainers might want a more durable carpet that can withstand foot traffic and make cleanup stress-free. If this is the case, try a low-pile carpet that's woven or tufted. Ask your local Flooring America experts about their stain and water-resistant carpet options. 

If you want to add some soft textures to your living room but are already in love with your hard surface flooring, consider using an area rug. Big, small, round, rectangle, patterned, or monochrome, these lovely area rugs also serve as a design element that can tie your living room together. A statement rug is an easy way to bring a touch of coziness to a room while making it more visually interesting.

Living Room Floor Ideas Based on Your Lifestyle

No matter what type of living room flooring you choose, keep your lifestyle needs in mind. For example, think about how the color coincides with your day-to-day life. If your kids tend to track in mud after their soccer games, do yourself a favor and opt for a darker-colored floor. If you have a light-haired dog like a golden retriever, you’ll want a lighter-colored floor, so you don’t have to vacuum every day to keep your floor from looking like a used lint roller. Is your beach bum family always running to the shower after a long day in the sand? Opt for a textured beige or grey-colored floor to camouflage any excess sand.

Find Living Room Flooring Options at Your Local Flooring America Store

If you’re working to find the best flooring option for your living room, your local Flooring America experts are here to answer all your questions. Ready to help with all your latest home improvement projects, start your flooring journey at Flooring America today!

Visualize Your Flooring Dreams

Want a preview of how new floors will look in your home? Try our room visualizer, My Floor Style. Upload a photo of your room, select your style preferences, and get a virtual look at each different flooring style. With My Floor Style, there are no surprises. Only beautiful new floors.