The design of our interior spaces can impact our mood and well-being, even down to our choice of flooring. One option that can have a significant effect is the natural design choices available with luxury vinyl tiles (LVT). In this article, we explore the psychology of these natural LVT flooring designs.
What are luxury vinyl tiles?
Before exploring the psychology of natural LVT flooring designs, let’s briefly explore what LVT is. Luxury vinyl tiles (or LVT) is a synthetic flooring type that uses a range of design styles, providing an elegant option for our home flooring.
While LVT is similar to vinyl, the two have major differences. First is the thickness and quality. LVT is thicker than vinyl due to the extra layers and thicker core. These thin layers are thin and flexible but add to the strength. As a result, LVT provides much higher quality and durability than vinyl.
Typically, around 2mm is recommended for low-traffic rooms (such as bedrooms) and 4mm for high-traffic rooms (kitchens and living rooms). LVT also has more layers than vinyl, including a top wear layer, the core layer (which changes in thickness), and a design layer.
Due to having more layers, LVT is more durable than vinyl. However, LVT’s standout feature is its high-quality and elegant designs. LVT excels in delivering a high-quality natural flooring design without the drawbacks of its natural counterparts.
You can choose from various natural wood, stone, and marble designs to transform your interior spaces. These natural designs are printed using the latest, high-quality techniques to encapsulate the natural elegance perfectly.
However, there is more to these flooring designs than meets the eye. While aesthetics will play a large role in your design choice, you should also consider the psychology of these natural flooring designs. From design choice to colours, each can have a different psychological effect.
Understanding the psychology of flooring
Our flooring choice goes beyond the aesthetic appeal and whether it fits with the rest of our interior design. While aesthetics plays a significant role, your choice of natural flooring design goes much deeper, impacting our emotions and well-being.
Many businesses use colour and design psychology in their floor choices. For example, a restaurant may choose a colour and design that can increase appetite. The same is true for flooring design choices in our homes.
It’s long been established that exposure to natural designs and patterns has positive effects on our mental health and mood. Given that we spend a lot of our time inside our homes, this can have a significant impact on our psychological behaviour and mental well-being.
As many urban homes lack the benefits natural outdoor spaces can provide, there is a greater increase in mental illness and insomnia. However, opting for natural designs in your flooring can have a positive effect on our physiological and psychological health.
The psychology of natural patterns
Natural integration into our home living spaces has a profound impact on boosting our mood and reducing stress. Whether it’s adding houseplants, more natural light, or choosing a natural flooring design, they all provide positive mental benefits.
Including natural designs in our interior design is known as Biophilic design and is growing in popularity due to its benefits. Natural flooring patterns, such as wood and stone, provide calming and relaxing qualities. Research has also found that exposure to these natural designs can boost our productivity and reduce stress levels by up to 60%. In the case of wood designs, it can even help decrease blood pressure.
LVT and natural designs
LVT is one of the ideal flooring options to benefit from a biophilic design. Fortunately, LVT has various natural designs and colour choices to suit your design needs and benefit your psychological health.
Many quality LVT brands, such as Ambiance and Karndean, offer several ranges with different natural designs and colours. While wood designs are typically a favourite in many households, stone, shale, and granite are also available.
Here is a breakdown of the different Ambiance LVT ranges and their natural design:
- Herringbone – a variety of wood colours in a small parquet-designed tile.
- Shale finish – natural slate with different colour and texture choices.
- Deep emboss – natural wood with a deep and rich texture.
- Stone and granite – providing a stone and granite design with a refined texture.
- Hand scrapped – recreates the design of a traditional distressed wood floor.
- Tick finish – a smooth wood design with a fine grain.
Karndean also offers an extensive choice of realistic wood and stone designs across all its LVT ranges. This includes different wood textures alongside light and dark wood colours. The same is true for its stone designs, including marble, slate, and granite in different colours.
Colour and laying patterns psychology
Alongside the natural designs in LVT, the choice of colour and laying patterns can also impact our psychology. With an extensive choice of colours available and the possibility of different designs, considering the psychology of colour and laying patterns is also important.
Laying patterns
First, let’s look at the psychology of different shapes. While traditional LVT is made of rectangular tiles, some LVTs have different laying pattern designs, such as parquet.
Rectangular
Most wood-design LVT is rectangular, which is one of the most popular geometric shapes for flooring. Rectangles can positively affect the individual tile or the holistic design.
Given the popularity and widespread usage of rectangles in all aspects of interior design, they can help promote a feeling of familiarity, which provides a feeling of comfort. This can particularly benefit our homes, such as living rooms and bedrooms.
Another effect that rectangular flooring patterns can have is a sense of peace and security. While you may not realise it, the angles forming rectangles depict mathematical order. As such, we naturally feel a greater sense of stability and security.
Square
Squares also affect our psychology. While similar to rectangles in their effect, there is also some slight difference. Many stone and granite LVT designs come in square shapes, which are typically ideally suited for bathroom spaces.
Another common geometric shape, squares also helps promote a feeling of familiarity and comfort. However, the angular and sturdy shape of squares helps promote a sense of trustworthiness and reliability.
The equal sides of a square pattern also reinforce a feeling of uniformity. If you want to create a home space focused on comfort and stability, squares are the go-to shape. For those who want a square wood design LVT, consider the Art Select Spring Oak from Karndean.
Geometric
Geometry is another pattern you can get with LVT. These typically feature a variety of different designs in a geometric pattern. They are usually laid in a hexagon or octagon. Despite having more than four sides, these shapes promote organisation and professionalism.
Colours
One of the great features of LVT is the colour versatility you can choose from. You can find a colour design to match whether you opt for a modern interior design or a rustic feel. Just like shapes, the choice of colour can also impact our psychology and feelings.
Lighter hues or tones can help us to feel more energised and result in more intensified emotions. In contrast, darker and more earthy tones promote feelings of safety, calmness, and comfort. Different colours can also have an impact:
White
It is associated with safety, sincerity, and virtue. It helps promote balance, openness, hope, cleanliness, balance, and simplicity.
Brown
It is associated with ruggedness, reliability, nature, and stability. It helps promote stability, simplicity, honesty, comfort, and dependability.
Black
It is associated with sophistication, authority, power, stability, strength, intelligence, and elegance. Black helps promote a feeling of power, intimacy, prestige, sophistication, and protection.
Grey
Grey is associated with dignity, wisdom, experience, conservatism, and tradition. Its colours help promote stability, relaxation, control, and comfort.
Beige
It is associated with purity, simplicity, individuality, and tranquillity. Beige colours help promote a welcoming, calming, soothing, and relaxing quality.
Bronze
It is associated with strength, loyalty, support, and stability. Bronze colours help promote comfort, reliability, elegance, and truthfulness.
The choice of colour, laying pattern, and natural design goes a long way to creating a home space we can cherish. By opting for a quality natural LVT flooring design, you can benefit from improved mental health and well-being.
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