Floors take up massive amount of real estate. They are the glue, metaphorically speaking, that hold our rooms together. 

Decisions are made from the ground up. What will our floors be made of - hardwood, tile, mosaic, poured concrete, carpet and/or area rugs? What motif and colors work with the room? How is the flooring going to configure around the stationary parts of the room: walls, passageways, and built ins? When answered, each of these questions will help decide what works best for each room. 

Then there are noise and safety factors to consider when choosing flooring. Are there downstairs neighbors to be mindful of? And if we have babies or older people in our space, will they benefit from a soft surface in case of falling? 

 Wooden floors w/character

keeping what we have

How can we keep what we already have alive even if we don’t like the look? If wooden floors - what is their condition? If not acceptable - can we salvage them by sanding, re-staining and sealing for a lesser cost than full replacement? Or maybe the existing wooden floors can be painted with a color that plays off the interior? A faux mosaic? It pains me to see home-improvement shows where limited budgets are gobbled up by costly floor replacements of brand new wooden floors, sometimes faux wood laminates – really? Is it not better to savage the old that’s developed character over time? This is not only least expensive but most importantly it is the environmentally friendly solution. 

One home improvement TV design star said she needed to take up the old floor because when they changed the floor plan, the old flooring did not match and therefore would no longer look seamless. Let’s instead ask, “can we make ‘not seamless’ work by giving this area a fabulous embedded mosaic (with real tile or if our budget is limited, painted to look mosaic) or strip the floors to take on this seemingly unsightly transition?”See FAUX Painted Floors a few paragraphs below.

Grey Art Gallery is on the first floor of a building that was formerly a manufacturing loft. Part of the charm of this gallery space is that the renovators had the smarts to keep these floors intact with all their many imperfections from machine bolt marks. This look can’t be bought, for any price!

FAUX painted FLOORS 

 are made to look like expensively inlayed wood - at a fraction of the cost

POURED EPOXY

Reach for the epoxy and urethane to get the ultimate shine if lightly refinished or inlayed wood floors do not seem sexy enough. 

KooKiE CORk

for a more subtle shine

This ancient craft has spread over the world adorning the ground we walk on, the rooftops of churches and mosques we peer up into as well as the walls in between.

Within 1 block of each other, in lower Manhattan, we stumbled upon mosaics facing an array of floors, walls and ceilings. Old and newer are alive, well and thriving inside and out. What a pleasant surprise.

Coffee anyone? Ceci Cela Patisserie on Delancey St hangs a chandelier from an inset mosaic on the ceiling.

Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Delancey Street. These mosaics are part of a recreation center shared by young and old alike.

Pairing textiles, furniture and flooring makes for that perfect sweet spot.