The scene plays out most nights at our house. After dinner, I go to the sink, turn on the water, squirt in the soap and start washing the dishes. Ellie comes running. “Ellie help! Ellie do dishes!”

She collects various play cups, we drag her step stool over to the sink and we switch the faucet back and forth between her sink and mine as we do the dishes. I feel like the “we” and “do this dishes” each deserve their own quotation marks there.

Every few minutes, I swipe the counter, the floor, the toddler with the towel and try to stem the flood.

And I think to myself, we can never have wood floors in the kitchen.

Now I realize I will not always have a two year old who loves to play in the water. But I still don’t think wood floors in the kitchen are for me. I am not that tidy of a cook or diligent of a housekeeper.

I feel lucky to have wood floors in our living, dining and bed rooms and plan to extend them through much of the main floor someday. But I don’t think I’ll be extending them into the kitchen.

A rule of interior design seems to be have one consistent flooring throughout your house (or at least the main floor). It makes your house seem larger, and, especially in an open concept plan, it allows spaces to flow together. And wood is the go-to flooring choice.

But when we (someday) renovate the kitchen, I’m going to be looking for something other than wood that works with wood elsewhere. And I’m going to have to figure out how to transition from wood to whatever floor I use in the kitchen.

I took a little tour around the internet to get some ideas, so I thought I’d share some of them with you today. I’d also appreciate your advice. Have you seen any flooring transitions that you like? How do you mix flooring? What flooring do you like best for a kitchen?

Stops and starts

Room boundaries are the most common points where flooring changes. Right now our wood stops and our tile starts at the large archway between the kitchen and the living room.

This house is open concept, but you can see they’ve defined the kitchen and dining area with different flooring.

Source: Bultman Architecture Inc.

This kitchen uses the boundary between the living area and kitchen as a rough guide, but it plays up the division in an artistic, creative way. I’m looking for something more subtle, but I feel like this look works in this cool, colourful kitchen.

Source: Haven Interior Design

I felt like I’d had a major breakthrough the other week when I realized I could choose another landmark other than the “line” between the living room and the kitchen. A landmark like the island. What if I made the island the boundary of the kitchen and used my durable, non-wood flooring on the kitchen side of the island and wood everywhere else?

Sarah Richardson kind of did this in her farmhouse. She put a tile section in the main work area between the sink and the stove. The rest of the kitchen (and the main floor) is wood.

Source: Sarah Richardson

You can see in this picture that the tile is barely visible from the other side of the island, so the feeling of consistency and openness is maintained.

Source: Sarah Richardson

Now I’m mulling over what kind of floor would work. I know there are wood look-a-likes out there, but given the real wood we have elsewhere, I don’t want to mix. And I’d like to stay away from tile or stone, as I find it too hard to stand on during long cooking sessions.

The kitchen reno is a long way off, likely, but thinking about it is part of the fun for me. Want to join me in a little day-dreaming?

What would you do?