It’s wonderful to come home after a long day and get greeted by the soft meows of a lovely kitten or the wagging tail of a happy dog! Anyone who has ever owned a pet knows the joy they bring to a home, but let’s face it – even the most well-behaved ones can cause damage to your house! We’re sharing the best tile flooring materials to install for animal-lovers - keeping your pet happy and your home looking great!
Whether your pets are allowed to be on your furniture or not, you know that there’s one surface that’s always prone to damage caused by your four-legged family members: floors! Scratching nails, potty accidents, fur balls, or even spills from food bowls…These are just some of the most common sources of flooring damages that pet owners deal with on a regular basis. However, these damages aren’t our pet’s fault – they’re ours!
When your flooring material is not able to withstand the wear and tear of your pets, damage is inevitable. That’s why it’s necessary to choose an appropriate flooring material, not only to extend the life of your floors but also to make your daily lives much easier. We know it can be hard to make a flooring choice when every material has its own advantages and drawbacks with pets, but there’s one option that’s by far superior than the others – tile!
This article will prove to you why a tile floor is a great option to keep both you and your pets happy! First, let’s go over some tile material options that hold up the best with your furry friends.
Tile Options for Pet-Friendly Floors
From small to big format, wood-looking to patterned, there is a vast number of tile flooring options that are both stylish and pet-friendly! Tile floors can be installed anywhere in your home - from kitchens to bathrooms, living rooms to foyers or other areas – but you should definitely consider tile where you have the highest pet traffic area on your floors!
Porcelain Tile
Our Spiga Olson Blanco is a wood look tile floor made of porcelain - a perfect alternative for pet owners who like the look of hardwood floors but hate the idea of scratching them!
Water, stains, scratches or dirt - porcelain tile floors can hold up to whatever your pet dishes out! When you have porcelain tile floors, forget about your pet’s nails, stop worrying about the potty accidents, or any other sources of pet damages. Porcelain tiles are your go to, especially if you own multiple large or energetic friends. These tiles come in many styles that are able to replicate the texture and look of hardwood, natural stone and even concrete as well– porcelain tiles offer designs that you can pair well with any style!
Natural Stone Tile
Marble, slate, granite, limestone… These beautiful natural stone floor tiles are great pet-friendly flooring options thanks to their durability and scratch-resistance when paired with a tile sealant. Natural stone not only brings one-of-a-kind aesthetic to your floors but it also resists almost all kinds of damages from the furry friends. For maximum performance, don’t forget to seal your natural stone floor tiles on a regular basis and make sure they’re cleaned regularly at all times. Slate floor tiles are especially resistant to pet stains and messes, especially if they are sealed regularly.
Marble is one of the most popular tile flooring options thanks to the beauty and classical elegance of the stone - but it does require extra care when utilized in pet-trafficked areas. While it creates a beautiful and durable stone floor, it should be regularly sealed to ensure the best finish. Acidic liquids - like pet urine - can etch marble floors, so stains should be quickly wiped up and treated with a neutralizing cleaner to avoid potential damage.
Patterned tiles such as our Arches Wooden Beige & Bardiglio Marble Tile are a great alternative for mudrooms or entryways which tend to collect most of the paw prints and pet hair.
Whichever material you opt for, the safety and comfort of your pets should be considered as well. Keep in mind that smooth, high glossy surfaces tend to be hazardous for our four-legged family members. Unless you go with honed floor tiles that offer a little traction, consider using area rugs on glossy surfaces, so that your pets don’t slide around on the flooring!
How is Tile Better Than Other Flooring Materials?
No Scratches & No Refinishing– One of the biggest problems with pets is their nails. Even well-trimmed nails can gouge hardwood and snag carpet. As a general rule of thumb, a pet-friendly flooring should be scratch resistant (since there’s not such a thing as scratch-proof!) so it’s a good idea to look for floors that have a strong protective layer to avoid nail damages as much as possible!
Our four-legged friends make nail contact with the ground whenever they walk, not to mention the damage when they start running across the floor. Keeping hardwood floors looking smooth and glossy when pets scratch or stain them is one of the biggest drawbacks to beautiful flooring, but luckily porcelain floor tiles can evoke the beauty of wood floors from white oak chevron planks to reclaimed flooring for a rustic interior.
They can withstand heavy traffic and are scratch resistant - keeping their beautiful finish for years to come without the need to sand, buff, or polish them to maintain their appearance! However, we think that keeping your pet’s nails trimmed is still a good idea!
As a trick to hide any possible scratch marks, choose flooring that has a rustic or distressed look such as our Rovere Natural porcelain tiles. Reclaimed wood-look flooring is beautiful and naturally hides scratch marks!
No Trapped Dirt -
Pets naturally bring dirt and debris inside the house - and carpets, laminates, and hardwood trap them in your floors! Because carpet is so soft and cushy for your pets, it’s the perfect spot for them to lay there all day long. This means dirt or mud tracked inside on your pet’s paws will most likely transfer to carpet fibers or even the carpet pads! Similarly, hardwood and laminate flooring cracks also host a good amount of dust and fur from your furry friends.
When it comes to tile flooring, dirt only falls on top of the tile surface instead of getting trapped somewhere inside the material. When there’s no dirt trapped inside or around the material, you can simply take a vacuum cleaner or a damp cloth to sweep up all the pet hair and debris off your tiles. Therefore, the cleaning process is so much easier for tiles, compared to other flooring materials where dirt, mites, pet hair and all dusts go deep down the surface!
This not only helps to reduce the amount of deep cleaning you need to do with pets in the house, but can cut down on pet dander related allergies and irritants - another bonus!
Designing a tiled entryway floor can significantly reduce the amount of dirt that comes from outside and gets carried to your carpet with the pets. As beautiful as it is durable, Selo Grand Hexagon Carrara and Thassos Marble Mosaic tile is a smart option for floors where you need a surface that’s easily swept and mopped!
Always use a marble-safe cleaner to ensure your floor tiles have the most beautiful long life - Black Diamond Marble & Tile Cleaner is a popular option for marble lovers, that's also biodegradable and safe for pets!
No Discoloration and Odor-
If your puppy has an accident on the carpet, there’s no doubt that it will sink into the fibers and pads. If you get pet food or water over your hardwood floor, spills will eventually cause permanent damage and warp your hardwood floors.
Laminate flooring has become a popular option lately thanks to the low cost and easy installation process, but it is especially prone to damage from pet accidents and spills. Even a small amount of liquid can seep between laminate floor planks, causing them to swell. Unlike tile floors, this means that the entire laminate area would have to be removed in order to fix damaged subflooring and replace liquid-damaged planks.
To remove stains on carpeted areas, you may need to strip, sand, and refinish the subfloor or change the entire carpet! Since urine sweeps into hardwood and carpet within the fraction of a second, you may also not be able to remove the odor for a while, even with the best industrial-strength cleaners.
Luckily, tile floors have proven to be water and stain resistant and there is much less to worry about discoloration and odor. While ceramic and porcelain tile floors are already stain-resistant, don’t forget to make sure you have natural stone tiles sealed on a regular basis, so that your floors can last many years to come.
Kasai Fumo 10x60 Rectified Porcelain Tile is a large porcelain plank that has the stain-resistant quality of porcelain with a unique wood look– perfect alternative to hardwood floors where pesky stains require a much more in-depth cleaning process!
Tile Flooring Reduces Pet Allergies
Cats and dogs produce proteins in their skin that can cause allergic symptoms in people and these allergens are particularly trapped on soft materials in our home, such as the carpets. Animal allergen levels found in carpets are very high and no matter how well they’re cleaned, carpets often trigger severe allergic symptoms including asthma.
What about dust allergies? While dust allergies are common in humans, dogs can be allergic to dust mites too. When you need an environment free of mites, setting up an allergen-proof room is advised. In this situation, a tile floor is the best option, as it’s so easy to keep clean and free of allergens.
So far tiles scored almost perfectly in all areas that pet owners are concerned about, right?
As you see, tile floors are resistant, require minimal upkeep and make our lives a lot easier with pets. However, you still need a few tips to retain the luster and prolong the life span of your floor tiles.
How to Make Tile Floors Last Longer with Pets -
First, keep in mind that stone tile is an organic medium – you need to seal your natural stone tiles regularly. Don’t forget to test the surface regularly to make sure it’s time to reapply the sealant.
Regardless of the type of floor tile you get, you may want to seal your grout as well, as grout is very susceptible to pet stains. You can read our post on sealing tile and grout and learn more about your grout options and the process!
Just like in any other floor surface, clean up the mess immediately after you notice anything on your tile floors.
Any animal lover knows you can’t always prevent pet accidents or catch them immediately after they happen. Try to take preventive measures as much as possible. Some examples are; placing a mat under the water and food bowls on your floor tiles, clipping your pet’s nails regularly, and using door mats at the entrances to catch the dirt as soon as your pets enter your home.
Finally, keep your floors shiny and new (and your relationship with your dog a loving one) with a proper cleaning routine;
- Pick pet-safe floor cleaners that don’t include any troubling ingredients that may harm your pet’s fur or digestive system.
- Choose tile cleaning products that include all natural and pet-safe materials made with plant-based ingredients – make sure to check the directions to see if they’re safe on the particular tile material you have. Our favorite products are; EcoMe Concentrated Multi-Surface and Floor Cleaner, Puracy All Purpose Cleaner Concentrate, Better Life Naturally Dirt-Destroying Floor Cleaner.
You’ll have to worry more about your shoes than your floors! Fan Wooden Beige Marble Mosaic Tile is beautiful with a wood-look finish - just seal it and you’re good to go!
It’s fun and exciting to pick new floors for your home, but if you’re a pet owner, this decision has extra factors to consider. Unless you’re planning on putting your best friend into your backyard, you need to find a flooring solution that will not only withstand the wear and tear of your pets in the house, but will also create the design you’ve always dreamed of.
Installing tile floors give you the best of both worlds – you get the chance to enjoy our time with your pets while your daily life gets so much easier.
Ready to get moving on a pet-friendly flooring project? Let us know in the comments what you think about pet-friendly tiles! If you need help in the selection process of your project, let us know so we can help. Remember to pick the best tile that will make you and your furry friends happy in the end!
