As every parent knows, having kids changes everything. Every long-term plan you had is disrupted, and every choice that you make is now influenced by your exhausting, wonderful children. So if you’re in the market for new flooring, you’ll be wondering about the best flooring for kids, and in this article, we’ll walk you through the prime choices.
Carpet
Whether they’re infants, toddlers, or preschoolers, kids love to get around the house, often as quickly as possible. This opens up three potential problems—the racket that rises from little feet constantly stomping across flooring, the damage caused by said stomping, and the inevitability of tumbles.
Thankfully, carpet is a type of flooring that solves all three problems. Your kids can dash across carpet in the spirit of Usain Bolt, and hardly make a sound. They can stomp on it, kick it, twist it, and it’ll happily spring back into place. When they clatter over their immense collection of Transformers scattered across the floor, their landing will be less a crunching thud, and more a muffled thwomp.
Carpet has the added benefit of being grippy, while being nice and warm in winter. Your infants can quickly grip their way to their first crawl, and not catch a cold doing it.
As with every flooring choice, carpet has its downsides. When your toddler carelessly flings a ketchup-laden chip at his sister and hits the carpet instead, you’ll need to quickly fetch the carpet cleaner before the stain sets in. Dust can also quickly build up in carpets, and if you have kids with allergies, you’ll want to vacuum regularly to keep their symptoms at bay.
Vinyl
While not as soft and protective as carpet, vinyl has the benefit of being highly durable, and can easily withstand the pressure of constant crawling, walking, and running from your kids. It’s still softer than laminate flooring, and is much softer than concrete, or hardwood floors such as solid timber.
Perhaps the biggest benefit to vinyl is the ease of cleaning spills. Whether it’s a carton of fruit juice, a trodden banana, or an entire plate of scrambled eggs, the laminated surface of vinyl makes it easy to sweep up, spray down, and dry off.
Vinyl is also one of the cheapest types of flooring available, comes in a multitude of designs and styles, and can be fitted without the help of a professional. If you’re looking for a budget option, vinyl is probably your best choice.
Laminate
As with vinyl, laminate flooring is waterproof and has a protective layer for scrapes, stains, and scratches, making it a great choice for energetic, messy kids. Spills are super easy to clean, so you can fix up any accidents with minimal energy and fuss.
Laminate is a little more expensive than vinyl, but many people prefer it because it mimics the look of hardwood—a highly desirable look that most people love. As with vinyl, laminate comes in a huge range of colours and designs, so you can pick a flooring that best suits your home.
The hardness of laminate flooring has two disadvantages for kids. When they inevitably fall off the couch while trying to snatch their brother’s favourite toy, they’ll feel it a lot more, and there might be tears. And as they constantly run to and fro, the sound of their feet hitting the laminate flooring will be much louder than vinyl and carpet, and echo through the house.
So there you have it. While there’s plenty of other flooring options to choose from, the properties of carpet, vinyl, and laminate flooring prove to be the best flooring for kids.
