Most of us have a pretty good idea of the flooring types we prefer in each room in our house. Perhaps you love terracotta floor tiles in your kitchen, laminate in your living room and carpet in the bedroom. However, when it comes to the entrance hall to your home, the decision might not be so clear cut in your mind. I’m not going to tell you which flooring is the best; each hallway, and each family will best suit a particular flooring, but we shall look at some options and examine any pitfalls associated with each type of flooring.

First let us look at carpet. While it might be the obvious first choice, or at least a relatively cheap choice, the hallway is the most used part of the home in terms of footfall, and a carpet will soon wear thin. If you do choose carpet then you should make sure it’s as hard wearing as possible, and pick a dark colour that won’t show the dirt. Doormats and runners can also take some of the wear and tear of a busy family away from the carpet.

Solid wood can look lovely but it can be very expensive. However, most hallways are fairly small, so if you love the look of wood but can’t afford it in your living room, perhaps the hallway is an opportunity for you to have some solid wood flooring in your home without it costing the earth? For larger hallways though, it might still work out too expensive.

Laminate flooring is a good compromise, it has a simion. Heavy boots can scuff the laminate, and bits of grit can easily be trekked in on shoes and leave marks and scratches. Having a door mat can help to some extent, but if you have a large family who are coming and going all day, laminate might not be the best option.

Terracotta floor tiles can look gorgeous in a hallway. They do need a bit of looking after though. The problem with terracotta is that it is porous. If you have people walking into the hallway with wet shoes on, if the tiles are not sealed properly then they might absorb the water and stain. Sealant can keep the water out, but in a regularly used area such as the hallway, you may need to reapply it periodically. If you can’t be bothered with this level of maintenance then you may want to consider using porcelain floor tiles. They are not porous so won’t stain, and they are incredibly hard wearing. Porcelain tiles are tougher than granite. You’re very unlikely to crack or chip them and they won’t require any looking after once they are fitted.

We all know that laying your own floor tiles can make you feel that your renovations are more personalised, with the amount of effort and had work that goes in to laying your floor it can be extremely rewarding, but why stop there?

Have you ever considered personalising your family logo onto a few of your floor tiles to give your home a classic and stylish theme? You may be surprised at how great they look. You don’t have to stop at your floor; Tiles can make great coasters and wall art. All you need are some un-glazed tiles, some staze-on ink, and a personalised rubber stamp.

You simply dip your rubber stamp in the ink, and then press lightly and carefully on your tile, you can add as much or as little colour as you wish!

Why don’t you have a go at personalising tiles for your home today!

It’s all well and good reading style magazines that show you how to create a beautiful home if you have several thousand pounds to spare, but what if every penny you’ve ever saved has been spent on the large deposit the mortgage companies are now demanding? Plus with the increased cost of living you know you won’t have a vast amount of savings to splash out on your home any time soon. So what can you do?

Well firstly see what you already have. Perhaps you have some old stone tiles in your home, that with a bit of love and attention and a lot of elbow grease, could come up looking really stunning. Obviously making use of anything that is already there will be much cheaper to repair or clean than to replace.

Ask everyone you know if they have anything at all going spare. Most people have some old piece of furniture in the garage they don’t know what to do with. Also most people end up with more of a lot of things than they need, so putting together enough crockery and cutlery to suit your needs shouldn’t be too much trouble. Everyone has a spare mug or two, there’s no need to buy any. Every pound saved is a pound that can be put towards materials for improving your home.

If you’re lucky enough to be given a selection of furniture then it’s likely to be a real mismatch. If you’re lucky then the mismatch might just work as it is, but there are plenty of steps you can take to unite these disparate pieces. You could paint all the items destined for one room the same colour, and you could replace handles with ones that match. Fabrics draped over furniture can look really opulent and cover a multitude of sins. You can easily pick up remnants of fabric from fabric shops. They often sell off the ends of rolls at bargain prices. Or have a hunt in the charity shops for an interesting old curtain you can adapt.

Your town may have a Freecycle mailing list. If it does this is well worth keeping an eye on. You will be sent emails by people who have something they wish to give away for free. If you’re lucky, and ask politely you can get some really great stuff, simply for going to collect it. It’s a great way to pick up a sofa or some old furniture. Of course you’re not likely to get anything in mint condition, but put a throw over a comfy old sofa and it’s as good as new.

Charity shops and car boot sales are well worth the time it takes to peruse them. You’ll nearly always find a gem if you look hard enough. Pretty cushions and pictures for your walls can be bought very cheaply and will make a room feel more like a home.

You don’t need designer products to make a room look great, with a bit of work and a bit of flair, other people’s discarded belongings can have a whole new lease of life. It’s recycling at its finest!

Wallpaper can be expensive, and papering can be a time consuming job you won’t want to be repeating too often, so whatever wallpaper you choose, you’re likely to be looking at it for quite some time. Papering a room with wallpaper that becomes unbearable to look at can be a costly mistake so make sure you get it right first time.

Firstly, don’t just pick the paper you love the most. There is a big difference between loving the pattern or colour on a roll, and loving it covering your entire room. Consider the needs of the room first. If the room is small, then a dark paper with a large pattern is really not going to be suitable. It will make the room look smaller and more cluttered. If your room is large and well lit, then you can get away with a large pattern, but it still may be a bit too much on every wall. If you adore large patterns but feel it would engulf the room if you papered the entire room in it, then perhaps you could use this paper in the alcoves or on a chimney breast, making a feature of the paper rather than covering the whole room with it.

With any bold pattern, you need to be really sure that you will be happy with it and won’t get fed up of looking at it. You also need to consider how the colour of the paper will go with other things in the room that you won’t be replacing, such as the flooring or the furniture. Will orange patterned paper work well in your kitchen, or will it be too much with your terracotta floor tiles? Will green paper clash with your pink carpet and sofa?

When choosing paper for a child’s room you also need to consider if their tastes will change, character paper can be fun, but in six months this character may not be popular, or they may feel it is too babyish. The best option for kids can often be to keep it simple, and use colour rather than characters to brighten up the room.

You need to consider how long you will be leaving it between redecorating too. If you like to decorate often then this needn’t be too much of a worry, but if you really dislike decorating, or simply know you won’t be able to afford to redecorate for some time, you need to pick wallpaper that you will be happy with, and that won’t look dated too quickly. Depending on the use of the room, and your family, you may also want to pick a paper that is easy to clean. If you have children and pets then wallpaper can easily get grubby with little hands and muddy paws about!

Also consider the state of your walls. If they are uneven then a paper with a texture to it can be really good at disguising a bad wall and giving you a much nicer finish than you would be able to get with paint.

It’s usually best to remove your old tiles first rather than just tiling over them, and if you’re thinking of doing this just to save time or effort then it’s really best not to. Doing the job properly by removing the old tiles is worth the extra effort involved and actually tiling will be easier if you’ve got a decent surface to start with. However, in some older properties you may find that removing the tiles will cause structural damage to the walls, especially if they’ve been there for decades. If you’re unsure if removing the tiles is going to cause this sort of damage then it’s a good idea to get some advice from a professional, as it can be costly to repair. If this is the case then you may have no choice but to tile on top of the existing tiles. You will of course be making the room slightly smaller, so it’s not a choice to make purely for convenience.

The first thing you need to do is to check for any loose tiles or tiles with cracks or chips. Obviously you need a solid level surface to tile on so it’s best to remove the broken tiles with a hammer and chisel, taking care not to break any of the surrounding tiles. A layer of masking tape around the surrounding tiles may help you avoid cracking or chipping them. Then use filler for the gaps to create a level surface again.

Tiles aren’t the best things to try and stick other tiles to, so you need to do all you can to make it more viable for the adhesive. Firstly they need a really good scrub, get all the dirt and grease off. The best product for the job is sugar soap. This is a degreaser but it is also grainy so it will work well to remove ingrained dirt. You’ll need to apply it with some warm water then wait awhile for it to take effect on any grease. Kitchen wall tiles are likely to be greasy from cooking fat in the air, but bathroom wall tiles can also get a greasy layer on them from soaps and shampoos etc. so they all need a thorough clean.

Leave it to dry completely. Your new tiles won’t stick well to wet tiles. Then give them a rub over with some coarse sandpaper, this should take a little of the gloss off and give a better surface for the adhesive to adhere to. Next make sure you get rid of any dust, and you can begin tiling as you would normally. Don’t be tempted to use the old tiles as a template and match your new ones to them, it’s much better to stagger them so the joins overlay.

With tiling on top of tiles, you will need to let the adhesive dry for a lot longer before you can begin grouting. I’d say three days to be on the safe side, as the tiled surface beneath is a lot less porous than a standard wall surface so it’ll take much longer to set properly.

If you or your children suffer from allergies it’s important to pick the right flooring for your home. It can make all the difference. Carpet is the worst choice, the thicker the pile the more allergens the carpet can harbour. Dust and other allergens collect in a carpet and you can never completely remove them, even with the most powerful vacuum cleaner. Dust mites are very common in carpets, they cause no problems themselves, but their droppings can cause an allergic reaction. One square metre of carpet can contain up to 100,000 dust mites. They have an average lifespan of around three months and will lay over 300 eggs in this period. You need to be especially careful in a bedroom, ditch the fluffy carpets and get something more suitable. You may decide that a tough low pile cord carpet would be suitable but do also be cautious as new carpets can contain chemical residues from the manufacturing processes that can also cause an allergic reaction.

Consider instead a surface that you can clean thoroughly, it needn’t cost the earth, there are many cheap floor tiles you can choose from. For kitchens and bathrooms it’s easy, you probably don’t have carpet in these rooms anyway, but if you do, replacing them with porcelain or terracotta floor tiles will work well. For bedrooms and living areas you need to think a little more carefully about what will suit the room best.

You’ll want a more cosy atmosphere in these rooms that hard tiles might not give. If you have little ones running about then you’ll want a non-slip surface that isn’t going to be too hard if someone should fall on it. Cork tiles are a good option, they are hypo-allergenic and if you get a type that is sealed, they won’t hold any dust.

Laminate flooring is good too, even more so than wood as there are no crevices for dust and allergens to hide as you find in natural wood. Sealed cork, or laminate are very easy to keep clean and dust free. You can hoover them and you can wipe them down with a cloth to ensure there is minimal dust. It won’t attract dust mites as there’s nowhere suitable for them to live and lay their eggs.

You may also think vinyl is a good idea, it’s cheap and easy to clean, but there has been research that suggests the softeners used in the production of PVC can aggravate asthma, so be careful if you  choose this option.

If you replace all the carpets with cork or laminate but miss that feel of carpet underfoot. Consider getting some rugs. Make sure they are small enough to fit in your washing machine, then you can put them on a hot wash regularly to remove any dust and allergens and kill the dust mites.

These days you can buy some fabulous looking, great quality floor tiles very cheaply. In the past you may have been put off tiling an entire floor due to the cost, but it’s definitely worth considering it now. As well as being able to buy cheap floor tiles, you can get so many different types of floor tile, there’s bound to be something perfect for every floor that will look stunning in your home.

Floor tiles are a great alternative to carpet or wood. For the most part they are very low maintenance, and they’re so much more hygienic than other flooring surfaces. They’re great if you have pets, as muddy footprints will wipe off, and pet hair can simply be swept up. Because they’re so easy to clean it makes it the ideal flooring if anyone in your house suffers from allergies. Removing pet hair and pollen for example from carpets requires a lot of hovering, and you’re unlikely to remove everything. Your floors will be so much cleaner with tiles.

You might think tiles will be cold under foot, but it’s not true, tiles are good insulators. If you’re concerned about heat then pick a tile known for its heat retaining properties such as terracotta. A tiled floor is also perfect for under floor heating. Imagine stepping onto warm tiles in your bathroom or kitchen first thing in the morning!

In general tiles will last longer than carpet too, even the cheapest floor tiles are likely to wear less than a carpet, especially in the high traffic areas of your home such as hallways. In our house I got sick of replacing the carpet in the downstairs hallway. I tried a carpet that was supposed to be hard wearing, it did last a bit longer, but it didn’t look very nice to be honest, and the texture was very rough on bare feet. We eventually decided to lay some mosaic floor tiles instead and they are fabulous. We have a Victorian terraced house and these tiles look like they’ve always been there; any wear just makes them look better and more original. The tiles were not even expensive! I had worried about buying cheap floor tiles, but they seem to be great quality and really look the part. With a large family, tiles are a must have for us. The kids can kick off their shoes in the tiled hallway and I can simply wipe away the dirt with a mop now and again. The carpets we had got stained so quickly near the doorway with dirty shoes.

If you’re looking for cheap floor tiles you’ll find some online retailers that specialise in them. They don’t sell them cheap because they are low quality, rather they buy in bulk, getting a good discount and passing those savings on to you. There are some gorgeous expensive designer tiles out there, but with the array of cheap floor tiles available, with a little thought you can achieve the same fabulous effects very cheaply.

There have been great advances in the manufacturing of tiles, and you can now achieve the effect of natural tiles with porcelain or ceramic tiles that look just like various natural materials. You needn’t think you can’t afford a stone or slate floor these days, you can achieve this look by using slate or stone effect tiles which will be much cheaper than buying the real thing. Not only that, but they may well also be harder wearing, as porcelain is proven to be stronger than stone and slate, and also easier to maintain as a porcelain tile won’t need to be sealed like a stone or slate one would, to protect against water and staining, so your cheaper floor tiles will save you extra time and even more money!

If you do have your heart set on natural stone, you can still find some good deals. You can find cheap floor tiles of all types these days so you should be able to get the floor you want without breaking the bank. You can find some great discounts on the Internet too. So, don’t forget to look online for your cheap floor tiles. Online retailers have lower overheads, so they can often sell their items more cheaply than a retailer with a large store or showroom. You really can create the look you want at a price much lower than you might imagine.

The thing to remember these days is that tiles in general are manufactured to a high standard, so cheap floor tiles doesn’t mean low quality floor tiles. Don’t think because you’ve picked up your floor tiles cheaply, that they will crack and be a false economy. The chances are they will be as tough and hard wearing, and just as beautiful as more expensive tiles.

Ordering your cheap floor tiles online can be really handy, as they’ll be delivered to your door. Make sure you order some extra though in case of breakages. About 5% extra is usually a good rule of thumb. If you’re ordering from a website that charges per delivery, it could also make your floor tiles even cheaper if you order for more than one room at once. Stock does change as certain types of tile become more or less popular so if you spot a style you love for a future project, it can be worth getting them while you can. Don’t forget, most online retailers will also sell you the grout and tools you’ll need for the job. That will save you a trip to your local DIY store and could well save you money too.