Fantastic Flooring Options for Your Basement

When it’s time to upgrade the way you are using your basement, at some point in your project planning, you will ask the question: What’s the best flooring for the basement? Whether it’s an additional living space, office, workout area, or the ultimate home theater room, Johnston Paint & Decorating can help you answer that question with some fantastic flooring options for your basement!

Luxury Vinyl Tile or Planks

Luxury vinyl tile or planks are attractive, incredibly durable, and easy to maintain, which makes them a great candidate for areas where you expect frequent foot traffic. However, luxury vinyl is also inherently waterproof, which means that you can install them on floors below the ground level! Perfect for basements that can experience moisture, LVT will also provide excellent dimensional stability, which means that the size and the shape of the tiles will remain stable with humidity changes.

Thanks to easy-to-use interlocking joints, luxury vinyl is exceptionally easy to install and designed to float over the subfloor instead of glued down. You can safely install vinyl tiles over many types of basement subfloors, providing homeowners impressive and valuable versatility. If you want a more upscale appearance, luxury vinyl tiles will also provide elegant options that create the sophisticated look of wood, ceramic tile, or stone in an area that typically doesn’t receive as much design consideration!

Laminate

Laminate flooring will offer tremendous durability along with the gorgeous, authentic look of wood, tile, or stone as a basement flooring option. Many laminate options are suitable for a basement floor installation below ground level and offer enhanced water resistance, but be sure to verify from the manufacturer that the product you love will work well in your specific basement conditions. Since you do not have to glue laminate flooring down and the planks often feature a glueless locking system, installation is much easier and faster than hardwood installation- and can even represent a DIY project if you have adequate flooring experience.

Engineered Wood

While solid hardwood flooring is best suited for living spaces that won’t experience moisture conditions, engineered wood flooring offers greater moisture resistance and can be installed on a basement floor below ground level if verified by the manufacturer. Engineered wood also comes in interlocking planks and can be installed over concrete or other suitable subfloors. You will generally have the option of installing engineered wood as a floating floor or securing the planks to the subfloor with glue or nails using the manufacturer’s recommended underlayment. Although engineered wood can be a more expensive flooring choice, it will represent a value-adding investment to your home and give you a striking natural wood surface in your elevated basement design scheme!

Carpet Tiles

Carpet tiles provide a soft floor for children to play on, enhance sound absorption, and offer virtually unlimited options for appealing floor patterned design. However, carpet generally may not be your best choice if the basement floor is below ground level. Even on a sunny day, the basement flooring can experience dampness or moisture issues. If your basement does not have moisture issues or waterproof tiles are selected, carpet tiles are incredibly easy to install with interlocking pieces and no adhesive required. They also can come with attached padding so that a separate pad below the tiles will not be necessary.

Rubber Floor Tiles

Rubber floor tiles can be the perfect flooring for basement sections that need durable, easy to maintain, or water-resistant floors like a laundry room or play area. Want to set up that exclusive, personal gym in your basement? Rubber floor tiles can be just the thing to put a bounce in your step! Installing the interlocking tiles is simple on concrete or other sub-floors using double-sided tape. Since rubber tiles are completely waterproof, you can use them on basement floors located below ground level. Removing the tiles is also exceptionally easy, making replacing any damaged tiles simple.

When it’s time to decide on the best flooring for the basement project you are ready to start, our flooring experts at Johnston Paint & Decorating are standing by to help you narrow down our basement flooring options! Visit our showroom in Columbia, MO for more information.