Dressing Up Your Hardwood Floors: Accents and Borders

In 2020, the hardwood flooring industry boomed, and its popularity continues to surge with every passing year. While hardwood floors come with appealing designs from grains and knots, upgrading their appearance to another level is possible. Accents and borders allow homeowners to create distinctive custom hardwood flooring to embody their aesthetic and add uniqueness to their floors. Find out what accents are, how to use them, and how to place them in this all-in-one guide.

What are Hardwood Flooring Accents and Why Use Them?

Hardwood flooring accents are small design details that help improve your style. They add a pop of texture and color to your room. In addition, accents draw the eye and enhance an architectural focal point in the space. 

There are several types of hardwood flooring accents, and each design impacts the space differently. These design additions add and maintain balance, proportion, and scale in your room. While hardwood floors are beautiful even with simple layouts, homeowners can still dress them up with accents. Here are some of the reasons why accenting hardwood is beneficial for your home.

• Adds subtle detail and interest to the wooden floors
• Turns simple foyers and hallways more dramatic and enticing to look at
• Emphasizes a section of the room
• Gives the room more life
• Can help lead guests maneuver into your home easily

With the right accent type, your hardwood floorings can turn into tasteful pieces of art that can handle the wear and tear in heavy foot-trafficked areas.

Laying Out Your Hardwood Flooring

Laying out your hardwood floors comes first before adding any accent to them. But deciding on what layout to use can be challenging. There are several ways you can lay your hardwood floors and factors to consider that will complement your chosen accent.

Simple flooring layouts are best if you don’t have any focal points in your space or area. Instead of putting a dramatic accent in the middle of the room, you can use accents as borders for your hardwood floors. To reach design consistency, repeat the layout and accents in other rooms.

But if you’re planning to draw attention to the center of the room, laying out your hardwood planks in straight rows around the area is a good start. Once you finish laying them, add a border by changing the pattern or direction of the hardwood. You can also inlay a different material for a pop of color and texture.

Using your hardwood floors to draw attention into the room is possible with accents. Instead of borders, your accents can take the form of different shapes that connect with each other. Remodelers can do this by arranging their hardwood planks in a square pattern and creating an accent in the center. Continue to lay the squares one after another from the entry hall until the deeper parts of your home.

Hardwood Flooring Accents

Unlike decades ago, homeowners and remodelers can create more accents on their floors. Because of the wide range of hardwood floorings available, people can also create unique patterns that fit their style. Here are some choices you can consider for your accent designs.

• Inlaying darker-colored hardwood planks as borders
• Medallions
• Inlaying dark hardwood planks between two hardwood patterns
• Hardwood decorative borders
• Alternate colors of hardwood in a pinwheel or target pattern

Medallions are intricate designs made of hardwood or other materials like stone or tiles at the center of the room. They make certain features and areas of your home more dramatic, like stairways, furnishing, and décor.

Inlaying a second, darker hardwood plank is a classic option when making accents and borders on your wooden flooring. They create a contrast of color and texture around your hardwood flooring and can even highlight wall and furniture tones. In addition, putting them between two hardwood flooring patterns can customize these traditional layouts and make them look more modern.

Hardwood decorative borders are available in many hardwood flooring shops. Unlike other accents, these are premade. Homeowners can install them in any way they see fit on their floors to get a more striking appearance. In addition, these inlays help define a space and connect transition rooms throughout your home.

The Costs of Hardwood Flooring Accents

Homeowners planning to add accents to their hardwood floorings should install them at the same time they lay out new hardwood planks. On average, the cost of hardwood flooring accents depends on either plank or lineal foot.

Border designs can range between $100 to $200, but more intricate designs can range from $36 to $500 per linear foot. Medallions can cost more than a thousand dollars and can take at least 12 weeks to arrive upon purchase.

Accent Designs and Hardwood Flooring Services in Austin, TX

Hardwood floors are now a must-have flooring for residential homes in 2023. Hardwood floorings have unique styles due to their specie, color, and graining, but you can still make them more valuable and appealing.  Flooring accents allow homeowners an option to enhance special architectural features and make them more dramatic.

Get an expert opinion from a professional hardwood flooring service in Austin today. Contact Kelly Hardwood Floors!