The Best Ways to Use Flooring Samples
If you are in the process of purchasing flooring, there’s an important step that you simply cannot skip: Bring home samples of your favorite flooring products. It’s one thing to love the way a certain flooring style may look in the showroom, but you need to verify that you love the color, texture, finish, and variation in your actual spaces!
After you have looked at all the gorgeous options in our showroom, and narrowed down your top three to five options, it’s time to get down to business. By testing these samples in your rooms, you can ensure long-term satisfaction once the new floors are down. Here are a few of the best ways to use flooring samples in your home:
The Importance of Flooring Samples
By using flooring samples, you can prevent a number of headaches in the floor buying process. If you are doing most of your flooring shopping online, samples will make sure that you are still in love with the picture swatch that you first saw on your phone, device, or laptop. When you choose a product in the showroom, you may want to bundle the cost of installation in your flooring purchase to take advantage of extra savings. However, the last thing you want to do is get an installation date scheduled only to realize the flooring choice is not the best match for your space. Testing flooring samples in your home beforehand will help eliminate any surprises!
Use Large Flooring Samples
An extremely easy consideration to remember when testing flooring samples is to ask for the largest sample available of a specific product. In addition to showcasing all of the attractive visual details up close, larger flooring samples will give you a more accurate idea of how the full-sized planks, tiles, or carpet will look once installed. You can walk on samples with footwear and barefoot to see how they feel underneath. It might even help to spill water on the samples to mimic what cleanup is like during an active week.
Use Flooring Samples in Different Lighting
It’s incredibly important to use flooring samples in different lighting to ultimately achieve the room scene that you have in mind. No matter what type of lighting you have in the home, all types of artificial lighting will cast a certain glow on your flooring samples. Testing flooring samples will allow you to add or remove lighting as needed to keep your vision on point. In addition to the overhead lighting in a room, you can add or use sources such as lamps, lampshades, sconces, dimmable recessed lights, under-cabinet lighting, track lights, fluorescent, or halogen bulbs to get the glow just right.
Use Flooring Samples with Furnishings & Colors
Now it’s time to test your flooring samples against the other significant colors in a space, which will come from furniture, wall and ceiling paint colors, artwork, and other decorative accents. If you are considering new paint colors or furniture pieces, this is also a great moment to make sure you have harmony with your new floors. Creating a mood board that includes your favorite flooring samples can help enhance your favorite aesthetic. You can add fabric swatches, paint colors, tiles, metal hardware, and materials to get a better understanding of an overall vibe and balance. This fun, valuable project can help eliminate flooring samples that serve your goals the least and narrow down the shopping process.
Use Flooring Samples at Different Times of Day
As the amount of natural light that comes indoors changes throughout the day, it’s wise to observe your flooring samples at different times. Many homeowners don’t realize that the color of sunlight will actually evolve from sunrise to sunset. Natural light has a yellow-orange glow in the morning, a truer blue tone in the full afternoon, and a red shade as the evening winds down. Make mental notes and write down how your samples appear at these stages of the day to help avoid a feel that you don’t enjoy. Although this step may at first seem overly cautious, it can help you eliminate a flooring choice and instill more confidence in the final purchase.
How Do I Get Flooring Samples?
If you’re interested in getting flooring samples to take home and test, we can help! Contact Flooring 101 or visit any one of our seven Flooring 101 locations to bring home the samples you love.
