As you cross a threshold and step into a new space, your first encounter with the room is the feel of the floor. Wooden floors have a sturdy, sleek, cool touch to them. They make excellent foundations for any room and offer numerous benefits over other flooring options. On top of adding visual texture to a space, wooden flooring also enhances a room’s ambiance.
Hardwood makes the best floors due to its high durability, long-term cost-effectiveness, easy maintenance, and quality look. More recently, people have gravitated toward filling their homes with blonde or light hardwood. This light-colored flooring can achieve contemporary, luxury, Scandinavian, coastal, and many more interior styles. Ranging from white oak to bamboo, the list of light woods to choose from offers plenty of different flooring options with varying benefits. Below are a couple more reasons why light woods have become popular flooring choices to incorporate within a space.
They Add Visual Texture
The light colors of blonde wood often showcase darker grains within the natural wood. By highlighting the burls within the planks, blonde hardwood flooring adds extra visual texture to a room. Even if the boards have been smoothed down, their highlighted burls still create an earthy, rugged feeling. The wood veins also accentuate other textured designs within the same space.
They Brighten a Room
The soft colors of blonde wood also generate brightness. Darker woods absorb sunlight, but light ones reflect any sunshine and indoor lighting. Plus, light wood is easier to see in the dark.
They Create the Illusion of Space
If you’ve ever sat in complete darkness, you know that the darkness emits a consuming thickness, making you feel claustrophobic and small. Light woods combat that enclosed feeling by emanating spaciousness through illumination. Just as mirrors and tall windows enlarge an area by adding brightness to a room, light wood flooring also creates the illusion of a bigger space with its bright coloration.
They’re Easier To Clean
Although the pale complexion of blonde hardwood boards makes collected house dust more visible at times, it does make it easier for one to clean. The fairness of the wood creates a simple cleaning process because it helps people quickly find the spots needing a good mop and sweep. The lighter coloring also holds more visible shine, giving off the impression of a spotless floor.
They Highlight Furniture
Although dark wooden flooring matches vivid colors, it can swallow darker furniture by blending them into the ground. Meanwhile, light-toned floors distinguish where a furniture piece begins and ends, highlighting the entire object. They make muted-colored items seem sleek, help pastels emit a soft aura, and refine cooler tones.
They Complement Various Interior Design Styles
One of the most significant reasons why light woods have become popular flooring choices is that people can use them for various design styles. Depending on your wood choice, you can achieve a specific look that incorporates a mix of interior features. Here’s a list of style examples that use light wood flooring and how the flooring enhances their aesthetic:
Contemporary
Contemporary designs encapsulate the current times while merging influences from other eras. They often feature soft tones and colors, making light wood flooring an excellent base for their rooms. The use of light wood also distinguishes contemporary from modern; people like to group the two into one category. However, modern styles feature cemented and dark flooring, while contemporary usually leans toward wooden foundations.
Luxury
The design world has dubbed white and gold as the colors of polished luxury. This look values light hardwoods featuring little visual texture that matches their sophisticated design approach. Luxury designers also like that blonde floor panels make a room feel bigger.
Scandinavian
This stylish expression focuses on luminous, airy, natural appearances, which light wood flooring emanates. Ashy and cooler-toned hardwoods further create that spacious, straightforward aesthetic for which Scandinavian interiors strive.
Farmhouse
The goal of farmhouse-chic is to create a rustic presence that’s cozier, homier, and more open. Light wood flooring ticks all those essentials. People use an abundance of wooden pieces and design elements to highlight farmhouse designs, and the light hardwood flooring pair well with other woods.
Eclectic
Eclectic designs consist of a cultural collection of items, mixing and matching numerous pieces of décor. An eclectic room is like a treasure trove of finds, and eclectic interiors combat the risk of clutter by featuring a lot of neutrals, which best match light wood flooring.
Coastal
Many coastal homes incorporate light wood flooring because some blonde woods look like sun-bleached driftwood. The faded tones of light wood also complete a beachside atmosphere by matching the natural tones of sandy coastlines and brightening the blue accents that imitate the ocean. Plus, if it’s inevitable that sand will be present within a home, light wood flooring makes a perfect match because it blends in with the sand.
Types of Light Woods
If this list of reasons why light woods have become popular flooring choices entices you to join the trend for your own space, the next step for you is to choose a type of light wood. The selection of light woods to choose from for your floors include:
- Red oak: This wood is one of the palest hardwoods, offering pinky undertones.
- White oak: In contrast to red oak, white oak provides more golden undertones. From the Forest’s white oak engineered flooring comes in an assortment of stains, giving you lots of soft, light colors to explore for your desired space.
- Birch: Birchwoods give you natural light and grainy planks, but they do not work well with stains.
- Maple: The lightest hardwood. Blonde maples provide a smooth, clean look and are often used in Scandinavian furnishings.
- White ash: White ash lumber comes with prominent burls, giving you some texture to incorporate into your room.
The next time you find yourself revamping or building a room, don’t overlook the floors. The floor is the first thing you make contact with when you walk into a room, so show yours the proper attention by putting thought into the type of flooring you want. Light or blonde wood floors offer plenty of benefits, making them popular flooring choices to feature within a home. With light woods in your space, you can brighten and expand the space and accentuate a certain ambiance.
