As the days grow longer and the sun shines brighter, it won’t be long until the warm summer months are upon us.
For many, summer is the best season of the year, and if you’re a lover of warm sunshine and clear blue skies, what better way to make the most of the glorious weather than with the installation of your very own sunroom.
Sunrooms are essentially additional rooms attached to your home that are designed to allow plenty of natural sunlight into the home, while providing clear, unobstructed views outdoors. They’re usually made primarily from glass and can help bring light and warmth into the home.
As sunrooms are essentially extra rooms attached to your home, it’s important they look the part, are practical, and go with the overall décor, style, and aesthetic you’re looking to achieve. Fitting the right floor is the perfect way to achieve precisely that.
For those of you looking for ideas and inspiration for your new floor, here are several DIY sunroom floor installation options and costs to consider.
Don’t Be Afraid of Carpet
When people think of sunroom floors, they immediately think of harder materials such as tiles and hardwood. Now, don’t get us wrong, these are popular choices and we’ll be looking at them in more detail shortly, but don’t be so quick to write off carpet.
For those of you who live in fairly cooler climes, carpet in a sunroom is a fantastic material to help add a little extra warmth and insulation. It’s also very cozy and comfortable underfoot, and is ideal for those of you with small children.
Carpets are ideal in a sunroom because they not only feel very comfortable, but they also come in a variety of different patterns, colors, styles, and thicknesses, so you can find a carpet that suits the décor you’re looking for.
As an added bonus, carpet is easier to maintain than a hard surfaced sunroom floor because you don’t need to mop it when cleaning. Simply run the vacuum cleaner around and you’re all set.
Wood Effect Tiles for a More Natural Look
Wooden floors are very popular in sunrooms, especially for people looking for a more natural look. Unfortunately, some wooden floors are also fairly expensive and are susceptible to damage when left in direct sunlight for too long.
If you like the aesthetic appeal that wooden floors bring to a sunroom, but cannot justify the expense, or afford it for that matter, wood effect tiles are perfect.
As the name implies, these are specially designed tiles that are designed to look just like real hardwood floors.
If installed correctly, they look almost identical, and as they are tiled, they’re typically more durable and will likely last longer. Some woods can warp and fade in direct sunlight, not to mention moisture from mopping them, or simple spillages, can also negatively impact the wood. Wood effect tiles are a great workaround.
Add a High Shine Floor
If your sunroom is positioned in a particularly shady part of your home, or if the design simply doesn’t allow the roof and ceiling to get particularly bright, a high sheen floor could be the solution.
Polished high shine floors, like a polished mahogany for example, not only look stylish and sophisticated, but they also help to reflect sunlight upwards.
Another great thing about high shine floors is the fact that most materials used in these floors go with a variety of different styles and decor. Whether you’re going with ultra-modern and minimalistic, to traditional and retro, high shine flooring can work wonders.
Use Colored Tiles to Tie Everything Together
Rather than plain tiles, if you’re looking to bring a little more color into your sunroom, why not opt for colored tiles?
Colored tiles will help add some color and brightness to your room, plus you can also use them to tie everything else together in the room. If you’ve gone with a green and black color scheme for example, tiles which feature green and/or black will work wonderfully and will bring everything together effortlessly.
If you’ve gone with a more muted and neutral color scheme, how about getting creative and bold and using brighter colored tiles to add a flair of color to your sunroom?
Keep it Classy with Hardwood
Despite the fact that hardwood floors can be fairly expensive, and are harder to clean and maintain than other floor types, there’s a reason they’ve proved so popular for so many decades. In fact, there are several reasons.
Hardwood floors are great for sunrooms as they look stylish, classy, expensive, airy, and sophisticated. They’re also fairly easy to clean and maintain.
Hardwood floors are elegant and timeless, and work with every style and décor imaginable. Whether you’re going rustic with a country cottage aesthetic, modern and minimalist, or want a steampunk-y industrial chic finish, hardwood floors just work every single time.
Because hardwoods can fade in direct sunlight, due to the nature of a sunroom’s design, opting for lighter colored woods like beech, ash, and even oak, will help to reduce fading and dullness caused by UV damage from the sun.
DIY Sunroom Floor Costs
Now that we’ve looked at a few ideas to help bring the floor of your sunroom to life, we now need to address the elephant in the room and look at the costs.
One of the best things about DIY sunroom floor installation is the fact that you’re in control of your budget. If you have the budget and like the finish, expensive materials like lavish hardwoods work wonders.
On the flipside, if you are on a budget and are looking to keep costs low, wood effect tiles or wood effect vinyl or laminate can work just as well, at a fraction of the cost.
So, how much can you expect to spend on a DIY sunroom floor installation? Well, that depends on a number of factors. The larger the sunroom, the more materials you will require which means you’ll spend more. The materials themselves are also very important when it comes to cost, as different materials cost different amounts.
For more basic materials like cheaper carpets, laminate, and vinyl, you could be looking at between $500 – $1,500. For more expensive materials such as hardwood or marble tiles, you could pay anything from $2,000 – $6,000 for an average-sized sunroom.