Couple Can't Agree on Carpeting

Q: My fiancé and I are in the process of updating his traditional style, 12-year-old home. It has all original flooring, paint and wallpaper. We are starting to get ideas and completed the process before we got married in October 2005.

We are in agreement on most style and color schemes. However, we are in major disagreement over the flooring in the master bathroom and the carpet throughout the rest of the house. My design instincts tell me that carpeting a bathroom floor is outdated and impractical. I need to find something to back up my position on this.

He insists on keeping the floor carpeted with the same carpet that is in the master bedroom. The bathroom is large (over 200 square-feet) and has a garden whirlpool tub and separate shower stall. The cabinets are white with white countertops and gold fixtures. There are high ceilings and two large windows and a skylight, so the room is very bright. I am thinking white or light-colored tile flooring will look great. I've suggested getting a few plush throw rugs to add color and soften the feel, but he doesn't like that idea.

Also, I have always been under the impression that the more you can keep flooring patterns consistent, the better. I think it looks choppy to have each room a different color and/or texture. He thinks we should go by each room and not try to have everything the same. His home is over 3500 square feet and has a lot of open spaces where the rooms flow together. I need some ideas on this as well as helpful suggestions. I want everything to flow from room to room.

Any assistance you can offer is appreciated. We are on a tight budget and I cannot afford a professional decorator to come to the home.

Thanks!

 

A: First of all, congratulations - I mean, on getting yourself into a 3500 square-foot home! Here in New York, we think a one-bedroom apartment is outrageously enormous if it clocks in at 1000 square feet, so just the thought of having to handle all that extra footage makes me, predictably, anxious.

But I certainly don't want to see your flooring differences split you up before you get to the altar, so I'll see what I can do here.

On this particular dispute, I have to agree with you about the bathroom flooring. You might want to break this to your fiancé gently, but you're right: carpeting in a bath or kitchen is impractical, and looks weird, too.

Maybe it will help if you emphasize this aspect to your fiancé: If moisture gets trapped under that carpet - and it will, given that the bathroom is damp most of the time - you'll be looking at a job later down the road involving tearing up the carpet and replacing the subfloor, which will have gotten moldy and gross.

Maybe your fiancé will be more amenable to the idea of some kind of flooring instead of tile. I myself like the idea of the white tile, but maybe he thinks this will lack character, in which case he may be willing to consider more boldly colored and patterned tile. You could go for a Mediterranean effect, with hand-painted tiles in bright blues and yellow. A good, small tile shop will be able to offer you hundreds of styles.

• Tip: But also consider some other bathroom floor options, like slate or marble, or even rubber tiles. A trip to the tile store should be able to offer you solutions which may please you both. A laminate flooring may also be a good compromise, something that is durable, easy to clean, and yet comes in a variety of styles, looking like everything from painted wood to marble.

I do also agree with you on the question of the different flooring styles for different rooms, but here I think you have more room for negotiation. Maybe you could agree on one style of flooring for any part of the house that flows into another, such as if you have a dining area that is open to a living room.

But for a few select rooms, you could have different styles of flooring, such as carpeting in the bedroom and tiles in the den. It's okay to mix up flooring styles a bit, as long as the whole look of the home hangs together.

Before embarking on any of these ideas, it would behoove you both to sit down with pad and pen and sketch out your vision of the entire house. This will help you see how each room will work with the other rooms; it may be that you have plants in two rooms that are side-by-side, and through the plants you harmonize the two rooms with each other, but you can have different flooring and paint colors in the rooms. Or, you could use the wall color to make the rooms coordinate with one another.

But don't despair. Home decorating is often a source of tension for a couple, and you should consider yourself fortunate that you've chosen a guy who even notices something like bathroom flooring, and who cares enough to stick with his viewpoint - even though he's wrong.

Reprinted with permission from the Sheffield School of Design