4 Flooring Choices That Will Always Make a Room Look More Expensive

A wide shot of an elegant kitchen with herringbone wood floors, featuring a white fluted farmhouse sink, brass hardware, and a marble-topped oak island. Natural light streams in from a large window on the left, illuminating the soft cream and grey diamond tiles.

Your home’s flooring is what ultimately sets its personality. Polished checkerboard floors à la the Kardashians’ original Hidden Hills home ooze old-world elegance, while ripping out the original floors of an idyllic French château in favor of grey laminate would instantly eradicate about 80 percent of its charm. No sofa, no paint color, no amount of styling wizardry can recover from that.

At Homes & Gardens, we know the only direction worth going is up. So if you’re planning a flooring swap, it should do more than refresh. It should elevate. Some materials carry that weight purely through substance, others through how they’re laid, but according to the designers we spoke to, there are three options that rise above the rest and will always make your rooms look more expensive.