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Why You Should Choose Your Floor Early When Building A New Home

The creation of a new home is something that starts from the floor up.

Choosing your floor is such an important decision as it can make or break the feel of your home. This is why it’s so important to make the right decision from the design stage of a new build home.

You’re not only creating a new home for you and your family to live but an environment which will form some of your most cherished memories. The interior style you choose is a reflection of your personality and the environment you create will ultimately determine how you feel in your home.

What follows are the most important factors to ensure you’re confident, you’ve made the right choice and avoid any unexpected costs which commonly arise when leaving your flooring decision to the last minute.  

Building Plans Need to Take Flooring Specs into Consideration

Enter your pre-start meeting knowing exactly what you want and you will save a lot of time, money and stress when working with a builder. The more information the building company has about the floor the more seamless the process will be.

Firstly, the builder will need to know the thickness of the floorboard to integrate with other floor coverings and wet areas. Floorboard thickness will also be critical information when calculating door clearances and allowance for aluminium frames and full-height windows.

When all these aspects are taken into consideration it will create consistency and flow throughout your home.

Choosing your floor first will also enable you to clearly communicate expectations for floor levels and cleanliness early on in the building process. Having a flat, levelled, clean concrete slab is an important factor for ensuring your floor goes down with no issues or extra costs.

You don’t want the apprentice laying uneven concrete, or a dimpled concrete slab because it was laid while it was raining. Trust me, this still happens. If you’re firm with the builder about your expectations from the beginning they will be responsible for any issues which may arise which don’t match your expectations.  

Having full confidence in the style of home you want to create will reduce stress and extra costs during the build. Lifewood will work with your builder taking all the coordination out of your hands with our own site supervisor, scheduler and our team of experienced consultants. Learn more about our quoting process.

Set The Style Of You New Home Early

Knowing the style you want to create in your home is extremely important for choosing foundational colours and designing the interior tones to match, for example – modern traditional, contemporary.

The initial components to consider are the cabinetry, the walls and skirting boards. These components will set the design base for styling the rest of your home. Here are some examples of setting these bases for a particular style.

Janka hardness rating

Traditional Style Home:

Uses stronger colour contrast to highlight traditional elements.

  • Warm timber flooring tones
  • Detailed woodwork
  • Carved moldings
  • Framed wall decorations
  • Handcrafted furniture
  • Neutral coloured walls
Janka hardness rating

Modern Style Home:

Typically contains less feature with a cleaner, functional focused design

  • Neutral wall and cabinetry colours
  • Bigger windows and more natural light
  • Spacious open plan design
  • Minimal design elements with less clutter
  • Metallic features and accents through the house

To create true balance in your home you’ll need to create a non-conflicting colour toned environment which flows together.

Furniture – Complement or Contrast?

Do you want your floor to match your furniture, or will your furniture match your floor?

Your floor is the canvas on which your furniture will lay. The rule is always consistency and flow. If you don’t plan on buying new furniture then you should consider your existing furnishings when determining the feel of your home.

If you have Marri furniture, choosing a Spotted Gum floor will not only blend well with the furniture but will also promote the Australian timber feel of your home. Hamptons style homes tend to have traditional, white furniture with an elegant natural timber floor.

The beauty of a Stabilised Solid, direct stick timber floor is that it can be refinished multiple times over the floor’s lifespan. This means that even if trends change and you decide to follow suit with your interior, you’re able to resurface your floor and change its colour.

Image: Traditional styled home with Spotted Gum timber flooring and Marri furniture

 

Furniture can wear quickly, design trends can change suddenly. A remarkable timber floor will stand the test of time and age gracefully.

Budget For Your Dream Home

Your floor will be one of the greatest contributions to the look and feel of your home.

If you haven’t budgeted accurately, or leave it to the last minute, you may have to compromise on your dream floor and be very disappointed with the outcome.

We believe in giving an upfront cost to help you budget accurately for your new home.

Timber flooring plays such an important role in bringing your home together. If you haven’t budgeted correctly you may have to settle with an inferior engineered timber which loses its authentic look and feel. 

Secure The Price Early

Choosing your floor before the pre-start meeting means you’re making that decision 10 to 15 months before the floor will be installed. Typically, flooring prices rise year over year.

Luckily, most flooring suppliers will secure the current price with a small deposit.

Select your floor early and remove the stress. This will not only secure the floor you love in advance but you’ll also be securing the price won’t increase and upset your budget.

Tick the Box And Free Up Your Time

The amount of decisions you have to make when building a new home is so overwhelming that it’s easy to get frustrated and confused which can lead to poor decision making.

Choosing your floor is a big decision. Make this decision as early as possible and save yourself a lot of stress. This will free you up to have more time to focus on coordinating everything else with the builder.

Our team of Lifewood flooring consultants will help you create a vision for your perfect floor to suit your home and lifestyle. We will take care of the whole process, bringing your vision to life, seamlessly and effortlessly.

Image: Natural French Oak timber floor throughout kitchen and living room of modern styled home

Guarantee You’ll Have The Floor You Want In Stock

At Lifewood we source all our own logs to ensure ethical logging practice, plus we also produce and manufacture all our boards. Taking control of the whole process requires time to prepare everything for your floor. Depending on the floor species you choose this can be up to a 4 to 6 month lead time.

Choosing your floor first will ensure there are no stock shortages, no accessories missing, and no lack of craftsmen for installation.

We’ve made the process of choosing your floor simple.

Come visit us at our award-winning Osborne Park showroom and take the Lifewood 20-minute tour.

In just 20 minutes our consultants are able to understand the scope of your project, work with your design needs and walk you through all of our flooring options.

Bring your house plan and we will measure it on the spot and give you a formal quote with samples to take home.

To start your new build on the right foot, choose Lifewood to help you create the floor of your dreams and the rest will look after itself.