Dogs and Hardwood Floors: A Bad Combination?

Dogs and Hardwood Floors: A Bad Combination?

If you’re a dog owner, there’s a good chance that you have heard that dogs and hardwood floors don’t mix very well. Your canine pals have sharp claws, and these will heavily scratch and gouge the wood over time. Their tendency to drag mud and run around all over the place certainly doesn’t help, either.

You can choose other flooring options, and this might save you plenty of headaches in the long run. Laminate flooring, for example, is much better at resisting scratches and other dog related damage. It’s probably a good idea if you have multiple pets, or if your dogs are especially large.

But if you have your heart set on hardwood, then it’s time to take some precautions. While keeping your floor in good condition when you have a pup running around is difficult, it’s certainly not impossible either. Here are several tips to prevent significant damage to your flooring.

1. Get the hardest wood you can – Style is important, but when you have an overly energetic puppy at home, you also need to take durability into account. When choosing your hardwood, ask for the Janka Rating and get something harder than average, as it will stand a much better chance of lasting against your pet.

2. Clip their nails – Keeping your dog’s nails short is a good practice, and it will help prevent any serious damage to your floors. You might even want to look into getting nail caps for them; these are harmless caps that you glue onto their nails, and they last for several months. Ask your veterinarian for advice on local brands.

3. Train them – The damage to your floor gets much worse if your dogs run at high speeds, so it’s best to train them to walk while indoors. You might want to take it a step further and put down some rugs for them to walk on instead of your hardwood, and teach them to stick to those. If you only have hardwood floors in some rooms, consider making those “dog free” areas as well.

Need help with choosing your flooring materials, or have a hardwood floor that is in dire need of repairs? FloorVenue would be glad to help, we have an entire article on the best floors for pets here. Alternatively, just give us a call and let our team know about your requirements.


Frequently Asked Questions

A common worry of homeowners is that their indoor dogs will scratch and dent the boards, shortening their lifespan and causing the planks to lose their visual appeal.

In reality, this is quite far from the truth. As long as you can clip your dog’s nails regularly, the risk of them scratching your floorboards will be mitigated. In the case of a dog having an accident on your floor, there will be no damage as long as you can clean up within a reasonable timeframe.

The easiest way to protect your hardwood floors is to simply keep your dog’s nails trimmed. This will minimise risk of their nails scratching your floorboards.

You can also apply a scratch resistant coating on the floors, which is made of clear aluminium oxide to retain the natural colour of the wood.

On top of this coating, applying another layer to make your floor waterproof is also a good option. This will protect any excess moisture from seeping into the floorboards when your dog comes in muddy and wet.

Methods to protect your floor from urine can vary widely depending on how long the urine stayed on the floor before you noticed it.

The best approach you can take is to always be on the lookout, as well as taking care of any mess as quickly as possible. This is because the urine contains compounds which can bind themselves to the floor, causing stubborn stains to appear on your floor.

It would be useful to always keep a mop handy around the house. Products are also available which can help keep urine from staining your floor.

The best solution would be to train your pets to use a potty so you won’t need to go around cleaning up after them.

Laminate flooring is a good option on the market in terms of durability to pet activity. Laminate flooring is strong enough to easily resist the extra wear on the floors that owning a pet brings, without compromising on style for your home. In particular, a scraped or textured laminate will be much easier on your dog’s paws. However, laminate flooring is sensitive to moisture.

Hybrid flooring or Vinyl plank flooring is also a great overall option for dogs as it offers 100% waterproof capabilities which many other types of floors lack, on top of the scratch and dent resistance which they offer.

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