Armstrong has one of those “design a room” tools that you could literally spend ALL DAY fiddling with.
You choose a room design (I chose one that looks like the kitchen I want to have someday) and then apply wall colors and flooring choices. Good for testing out color combinations and flooring ideas, especially if you’re not a Photoshop whiz. The pattern picker lets you select all sorts of tile patterns – something I have alot of trouble picturing in my head.
Beware, it’s addicting….
http://www.armstrong.com/dmr/dmr.jsp?
Here’s my dream kitchen mockup.
(click for larger)
Anyone know of dark floors hide dirt decently? Or is it like cars, where every little fleck of dirt shows up? They can’t be worse than the shiny bright white linoleum we have right now, that hides ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Comments, Thoughts, and Feedback
Dark floors aren’t much better at hiding dirt and whatever you do DON’T use white grout! We had charcoal grey ceramic tile with white grout in our kitchen and no matter how much we bleached the grout it was permanently dingy and stained within a year.
Hi Mindy,
It looks like we Web Designers do similar things with our downtime. ;) Just yesterday, I spent a long time playing around with kitchen colors on the Glidden Website. Though I wasn’t able to choose alternate flooring, I did like seeing how different colors looked with different cabinet grains and stains (cabinets are something we’re focused on at right now).
Take a look if you feel like playing around some more:
http://www.glidden.com/visualizer/buildup.do?page=group&site=glidden&location=Interior
I think I’ll go spend some time on the Armstrong site now ;)
Leah
We have a pretty dark stain on our wooden floors and in the kitchen all the crumbs and dog hair really show up. I’ve noticed that friends with more honey colored stain don’t have this problem as much — so don’t go too dark unless you really like to clean your floors all the time.
Looks like fun, I wanna play! But I have a mac, does anyone know of similar programs us macheads can use? I Love the kitchen you designed but I’m wondering why everyone is so opposed to hardwoods in the kitchen I have had both light and Dark ceramic and they needed mopped everyother day, my hardwoods only need it once a week.
I don’t know of any Mac-friendly programs, but I am surprised that they aren’t giving Mac users a chance! I know you’re only about 5% of the population, but that’s still a pretty large chunk of consumers to ignore. Hmmpph.
I’m not anti-wood; I’d love wood floors in the kitchen, if we could match them up with the rest of the downstairs. But that’d be hard, and much more expensive than tile. Plus, with hardwoods throughout the downstairs it might be nice to have something different in the kitchen.
Thanks for all the tips – maybe we’ll go with a charcoalish grey, or just brown – less cleanup! ;)
Awesome choices! I love the green walls. Of course, I’m a green fanatic lately.
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